02/23/2018

Thinking Outside the Box

The Vatican is organizing its first ever hackathon

“No, I did not have to pitch the idea to the Pope,” laughs Jakub Florkiewicz, the co-initiator of the first Vatican Hackathon in history. “But the participants of the event hopefully will,” he adds.

So how did this unlikely event come to be? Florkiewicz explains. “Passionate myself about hackathons, I had the luck of meeting people – Vatican insiders – who actually were thinking of launching one at the Holy City and inviting youth to help organize and participate in it. We clicked quickly and decided to work together. Our initial group spearheading the idea comprised of fr. Eric Salobir, founder of OPTIC – the first Vatican-affiliated think tank on technology, the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communication and a passionate priest – fr. Philip Larrey.” Other Vatican institutions joined their team later.

“The Vatican operates different dicasteries and congregations, and each have different speeds of how they go into digital innovation,” he tells me. Some needed more explanation than others, but after flying a few times to Rome, Florkiewicz and Father Eric succeeded in getting the ball rolling.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Next Web.