Expectations versus Reality - October 2020
From founding Hack Vancouver to joining TKS, here are some of the things that I've worked on in September/October 2020.
Happy November!
For those of you who do not know me, my name is Byeongjun, and I’m a grade 11 student discovering the intersections of international relations, computer science and design. I’m also the founder of Hack Vancouver and an innovator at The Knowledge Society.
This year has been very special to me; while staying home during quarantine has been really stressful, it provided me with an opportunity to develop solid and fresh new ideas to execute. And that’s how I launched Hack Vancouver!
Launching Hack Vancouver
Since my first year in high school, I found this very interesting social dilemma: the structure of this society, including the job market, education, and career professions, divide people largely into two subject areas: Liberal Arts, and Math/Computer Science.
Luckily, I had the opportunity to transform my dream into action. With a team of ~10 organizers, we launched Hack Vancouver — the world’s first hack+policython.
We saw that an increasing number of youth are interested in making a difference in the world, but the majority of them aren’t given the opportunities and resources to get started. Furthermore, hackathons are often geared towards more STEM-oriented youth - essentially barring less “technical” thinkers from participating.
We’re bringing students from diverse fields and backgrounds to bring new perspectives to the table. Through Hack Vancouver, we hope to start important conversations, spark innovation, and most importantly, bring like-minded people together to work towards a better future.
For more updates — stay tuned!
Joining The Knowledge Society (TKS)
At the end of August, I had an amazing opportunity to join The Knowledge Society — a 10-month accelerator program that brings some of the world’s most fascinating people to solve the world’s biggest challenges. From having the opportunities to discuss Emerging Technology with industry professionals to network with like-minded people all around the world, TKS provided me with a chance to develop an interesting set of mindsets and work on the things that I’m truly interested in.
For example, we discussed the future possibilities and limitations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution — it was such an interesting topic! We discussed the implications of Artificial Intelligence, prospects of Quantum Computing, and the accessibility of IoT devices. These experiences gave a basic grasp of each topic, which I can then work on on a more in-depth level.
Hackathons!
In these past two months, I’ve participated in two hackathons — the TKS AI Hackathon and Hack the Garden.
The TKS AI Hackathon was where I discussed the future of e-waste recycling with my peers Ahmad, Josh, Aron, Shenita and Victoria!
We created Recycle.ly, an app that makes recycling easier through detecting the product through a camera and displaying the most convenient recycling option.
The app utilizes YOLO v4, an AI object detection system, to detect the approximate shape of the item, then the user is able to select the model/type to specify the item that they would like to recycle.
We thought this could be a cool idea, as through our research, we have determined that there are two reasons why e-waste ends up in landfills: external recyclers don’t actually recycle all the e-waste and most of it ends up in landfills, and the design of the electronics themselves making them hard to recycle. Through this project, we attempted to minimize that process as much as possible.
We’ve also had a few moonshot ideas, such as making the app it’s own marketplace for the buying and selling of used electronics: this would need an implementation of a delivery system that connects regular consumers and companies seeking to gain used electronics. This system would increase the convenience for both consumers and companies, which would encourage e-waste recycling even more, while achieving the goal of zero e-waste ending up in landfills.
On the other hand, at Hack The Garden, my peers Adam, Jessica, Seher and I have worked on a simple solution to make smart gardening easier — Agrismart.
The hackathon challenged us to solve food insecurity problems in Las Vegas by utilizing existing school gardens and other community spaces — 1 in 3 children in Las Vegas are hungry. Our team had 24 hours to learn about the problem, ideate, and pitch our solution to the judges from Green Our Planet.
We created Agrismart — to maximize food production in any space, based on AI-generated recommendations. Through pairing up with the plug-and-play package powered by Raspberry Pi, the users are able to integrate smart gardening hardware into any piece of land, whether it’s in a desert or in the rainforests.
We concluded that we are saving 131,486 hours of effortless smart irrigation through our package — the impact far exceed the initial start-up costs, with a 38% - or a hundred million gallons of water saved per year.
Although we weren’t able to win this hackathon, the experience it gave was truly amazing. I believe that hackathons aren’t just about competition; instead, it is a medium for collaboration — through team research and ideation sessions, we were able to come up with a tangible solution to reduce food insecurity — regardless of the outcome of the competition.
Designing for Wedrive
Lastly, I had this amazing opportunity to work with Ralph — a startup founder I met through TKS — to work on a UI/UX design of a ride-sharing service, Wedrive.
Due to my confidentiality agreement with the startup, I am not able to share the designs yet — however, I’ll be able to do that once we release the design by updating the webpage. Stay tuned!
I hope you enjoyed this newsletter — I promise, I’ll make it short next time.
In the meanwhile, feel free to connect with me on Instagram or LinkedIn! Alternatively, feel free to shoot me any questions via email or schedule a braindate with me.