Interactive Cologne Festival is an all-in-one, one-week biz&startup conference, hackathon, tech and creativity meetup and a music festival at its first edition in 2013.
As they best describe it:
“It is more than just a festival. It is a hackathon and startup conference. It is for talented hackers and designers who gather there to kick-off their own or others projects, refine or complete code collaboratively or just experiment. It is for startups, investors and entrepreneurs to meet in a creative atmosphere to discuss hot topics and network with other technology industry professionals who share similar passions and social interests.”
Impressive schedule
Different venues in downtown Cologne
The festival took place in nine different venues across Cologne, from co-working spaces, university seminar rooms and bars to more surprising ones like Trinitatiskirche, a church rented for a few days to host the hackathon and startup conference.
This is the main stage in the church, just as the people started arriving in the first morning.
Hacking and conferencing all day long:
The hackathon
A massive hackathon took place with tens of people participating. The most popular hack tracks were: Nodecopter, NoSQL and Big Data, Open Data – more specific Cologne public transport data, 3D printing, music hack – trying to create a singing-glasses-instrument , kids hack which was CoderDojo and mobile hack.
Playing with the drones:
…and the 3D printers:
…and of course Nokia Lumias:
CoderDojo
The first edition of CoderDojo Cologne was taking place right alongside the hackathon and I was invited to help introduce the children to Scratch. The program prepared for the kids was very cool: lemon batteries, a hand-made radio and even Tetris origami.
I received a gift from them, to bring to CoderDojo Timisoara kids.
Statistics everywhere
Raspberry Pi’s used as RFID counters were everywhere, from coffee, drinks to the fruit baskets. Some guys started dismantling the foosball table to install RFID scanners for score keeping.
Relaxing and music
We are inspired by Interactive Cologne and met amazing people just like their motto promised.
