What makes a good hacker?
Creativity. Programming skills. Being energized by failure. Patience. A love of caffeine. Humour.
These are just a few of the answers from the more than 100 “hackers for good” that convened at the 2023 TIDE Hackathon in Warsaw, 20-24 February 2023. These attributes were on full display by the 26 teams representing 13 NATO and partner nations.
The TIDE Hackathon is an annual competition that discourages convention and pushes boundaries to unlock new approaches to existing problems. The Hackathon welcomes divergent thinking and young, enthusiastic, diverse minds to solve NATO’s most pressing interoperability challenges.
This week, software engineers, Information Technology experts, coders, developers, and solution architects built and provided rapid demonstrations of emerging and disruptive technologies that will help NATO identify future requirements, develop software solutions, and accelerate warfare development.
The competitors achieved an impressive amount over the course of an intense competition. Three distinct challenges – the Disinformation Analyser, the Analytics Dashboard for Interoperability, and the Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Visual Navigation Concept Development – leveraged each team’s creativity, broad expertise, and competitive spirit.
“We need these types of events, methodologies to develop our technologies,” said Colonel Mariusz Chmielewski, Deputy Commander of Polish Cyber Command, emphasizing how events such as the TIDE Hackathon positively impact the fight against disinformation.
Ultimately, teams provided demonstrations of novel technologies to a panel of judges, led by NATO Allied Command Transformation’s Assistant Chief of Staff for Requirements, Brigadier General Thorsten Jorgensen.
Brigadier General Jorgensen highlighted the several goals of the NATO TIDE Hackathon 2023, aligned with those of NATO: “The primary task of the Alliance is the defense of the Free World, so partners must be non-stop ready for the challenges that the present and future bring.”
The TIDE Hackathon is part of the Allied Command Transformation-led Interoperability Continuum that also includes other TIDE Sprints and the Coalition Warrior Interoperability Exercise, or CWIX.
For more information about future TIDE events, please contact Ms Fiona Tomlin, [email protected]
