A masterclass in collaboration.

COIN South collaborated with Callaghan Innovation and a dozen startup centres and networks nationwide to pull off New Zealand’s largest collaborative online startup event. Over 950 participants joined in #HacktheCrisisNZ, a 48-hour challenge hosted online during a weekend in lockdown.

Over 50 mentors and coaches were matched with 55 participating teams, with help from an organising committee, and community team answering questions within seconds throughout the event. Silent chaos descended on the weekend, as teams busily hacked away from their own bubbles, connecting entirely over digital platforms: Slack, Zoom, and Guaana.

At the organisers end over 25,000 slack messages and notifications were pinging. 800 people organising and reorganising and finding their feet in new software.

By 2pm Sunday, 47 final pitches of solutions that could tackle the challenges of life beyond Covid-19 were submitted.

The judging panel included Sir Stephen Tindall, Greg Cross, Lisa King, Mike King and Vic Crone, who were all impressed with the calibre of pitches. Ultimately, they crowned Draw This! as the winning idea.

Draw This! uses storytelling and art to build safe and fun connections across generations and between bubbles throughout New Zealand, and ultimately, won the heart of the judges. Project Leader and Co-founder of Draw This! Holly Grover said the team gave themselves limitations early in the weekend with a narrow problem to solve: engaging with elderly people using only a landline.

Other top team ideas included Shopalong - a one-stop full-pantry shop marketplace for suppliers allowing locals to buy items from local stores and have it delivered to their homes, Swiftly.nz - a lightweight, online “Popup Shop” that business owners can use to get their business an e-commerce site up and running in less than 15 minutes and allows their customer to click & collect and PowerMove – a pay it forward power sharing initiative to get power to those in need. The public can learn about all 47 final submissions here.

COIN South and the other startup support organisations are now working together to offer follow on support to take these ideas to the next level and make them a reality.

The organising team are writing a guide of how to run an online event of this scale and make it open source so others can take this model and make it happen in their communities.

For those who want to see what they missed out on, there is an on demand channel here.

The event wouldn’t have been possible without the amazing sponsors who backed the event; Callaghan Innovation, Soda Inc., AWS activate, CO.STARTERS, Foundation North, Hamilton City Council, ChristchurchNZ, myob, and Propellerhead.