IPN as the first-time partner of HackYeah 2021 in Katowice
Europe’s largest hackathon on 10-12 December 2021 returned for the 7th time to the Spodek in Katowice as part of the Internet Governance Forum Afterparty, and the Institute of National Remembrance was one of the 12 partners of the event for the first time. Due to the pandemic, that edition was held hybrid. More than 1500 participants in Katowice and online from anywhere in the world took part in the programming marathon.
IPN’s task for programmers
On the initiative of the Director of the IPN New Technology Division, Magdalena Hajduk, the Institute of National Remembrance became one of the partners of the hackathon.
“The application of information technology to activities related to education and research is our idea to reach the young generation with the story of Poland’s recent history. Through digital creations, we want to use the potential of the content created during the 21 years of IPN’s operation,” explained Magdalena Hajduk, IPN’s participation in HackYeah.
GovTech Poland supported the hackathon, and the leading partner of the event was Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego. Ten tasks whose topics were chosen by the HackYeah partners concerned two categories: mental health and games in education. Each team had 40 hours to complete one task, and the total prize pool in the competition was PLN 570,000. The event organisers donated the profit from the tickets sold for the stationary event to support the IT education of children from low-income families.
Multi search engine for digital resources – the key to the past
Over its 21 years of activity, the Institute of National Remembrance has compiled kilometres of current archives in both paper and digital versions and has been involved in publishing and educational activities, including via thematic Internet portals. It is currently undergoing a digital transformation, one element of which is creating a tool for data management and its intuitive search by Internet users. For this reason, IPN’s task at the hackathon was to develop a multi-search engine for digital resources.
The first prize of PLN 30,000 was awarded to the Bards.ai team represented by graduates and employees of the Wrocław University of Technology in the following composition: Damian Brzoza, Karol Gawron, Michał Pogoda, Norbert Ropiak, Michał Swędrowski and Mateusz Zimoch for a solution called IPN Hub, and the second prize of PLN 20 thousand went to the Archiwiści team for a search engine called Archiwizjer.
IPN Hub “tracks” the Internet users
The operation of the winning search engine assumes that IPN shares content from its rich resources with Internet users, thus meeting their interests. It learns about users’ interests by collecting information about search phrases and how they use the web. This intelligent search engine makes it possible to create a personalisation system to develop digital content for specific age groups according to their needs, somewhat like the search engines used by Netflix or YouTube. It integrates with IPN’s web services and allows searching for articles, multimedia and photographs. Content corresponding to what the user searched for also appears in the search results.
“We hope that the implementation of our solution will increase interest in history, especially among the youngest. Nowadays, young people draw their knowledge mainly from the Internet. It seems to be a priority to create products that will facilitate access to historical content in the form of games or dedicated tools,” said members of the Bards.ai team after announcing their victory.