A panel made up of those involved in the HackYG 2018 hack-a-thon event held over 48 hours last weekend talked about its success during a panel discussion Wednesday.

The weekend event drew 50 people who stayed throughout the full two-day session, making up nine teams that created 10 prototypes of programs that could be used by government.

Another six mentors were also involved over the two days at the NorthLight Innovation Centre (the former Food Fair-Super Valu building on Second Avenue).

Lauren Manekin Beille, YuKonstruct’s director of community development, described the event as a successful first for the recently opened NorthLight Innovation Centre.

“This is an example of one of many pieces that are going to .... come out of this space, but essentially a knock-it-out-of-the-park first example of exactly what this team and Yukon government has essentially supported us to do – gathering people to come up with new ideas, to be innovative, to be creative across sectors in one shared space,” Manekin Beille said.

NorthLight “is being what we wanted it to be,” she added.

Alessia Guthrie is one of YuKonstruct’s co-founders. She said a panel of four judges looked at the projects with usefulness and innovation being the key pillars that they were judged on, along with other additional pieces such as creativity.

The event saw teams come up with prototypes that the government could use to improve services, with Ben Sanders’ team coming in first.

“I got to work with six really smart people who work in the government every day and who are finally trying to find ways to be more creative and found an outlet in this project,” he said before going on to describe the efforts.

“We built a chatbot prototype for citizens to be able to access government services in a totally new way. So instead of calling in or sending an email or trying to fax in a form or looking for things on a website, we built this concept harnessing artificial intelligence which allows people to communicate in real time, effectively a robot that was answering their questions.

“And that can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week and it can talk to hundreds of people all at the same time.

“It’s something that we built in a weekend; it’s an idea of something that when we work together, there’s no limit to what we could do to make this government one of the best in the country and in the world.”

He pointed to the potential in a number of efforts that could impact the current Request For Proposals, which Sanders described as slow, cumbersome and outdated.

“It’s exciting to see that through this model and other policies coming from this government that there’s a real openness to finding new ways to be better,” he said. “And that’s really promising. I think it’s really going to be great for our community.

“I think it’s a real step forward for all of us because ultimately innovation is the only way that we can get better and move forward as a community.”

Both Economic Development Minister Ranj Pillai and Highways and Public Works Minister Richard Mostyn spoke during the panel. They described the energy in the room as the teams worked on initiatives that could positively impact government.

“So we saw things to make it easier to order product from the Yukon Liquor Corp.,” Mostyn said.

“We saw ways that we could actually start to see easier what spending within government departments was happening.”

Mostyn also pointed to mapping and human resources programs and so on. Officials within the government’s ICT branch will be looking at the initiatives and meeting with the teams to look at the possibility of some of the projects, he noted.

“ICT’s going to be working with this to see how it, how, when, if we can start to move some of these great ideas into government in a way that’s methodical,” he said.

As Pillai noted: “I know after seeing what just transpired this last while; I look back to my officials (and) I think we would love to see more of this.”

Those on the panel all highlighted their agreement that the hack-a-thon event could lead to more benefits down the road.

Sanders pointed out that software developers had flown in from other regions and were talking of bringing their own work teams back to the territory.

“So if we could do that more regularly, think about how we could really leverage the investment in fibre and in the space and make this one of the best places in the world for entrepreneurs who are doing Internet-based work to come live and play up here,” he said.

“I think there’s a real win there for diversifying the economy and doing some really great cool stuff.”

Manekin Beille noted NorthLight officials have already heard from businesses interested in the possibility of a similar hack-a-thon to come up with new initiatives for their businesses.