Hack from Home Elyria awards prizes to four innovative ideas

xLab was proud to support the City of Elyria—together with its strategic partner Data swift and other partners including SpeedeonData, Kinetic by Windstream and Lorain County Community College—to organize and run the city’s first virtual “Hack-a-thon.” The event was held on October 22-24, 2021.

A Hack-a-thon is a relatively new concept and is not strictly defined by computer hacking and coding. It is a crowd and talent-sourced “working conference” that organizes participants into teams to work intensively on developing a solution to a community-wide problem. In this case, the teams worked together over the weekend to “hack” together a solution to community-wide issues in Elyria. 

As a typical post-industrial American community, Elyria offers a powerful opportunity to re-imagine the future of similar cities through the use of digital technology. xLab worked with city leaders, residents, business owners and community leaders to design solutions for intractable challenges that Elyria, like many American cities, is facing.

Students and community members from the city formed six teams that presented solutions. The winning ideas included All Paws on Deck, Winter Market and Digital-E Study Hall. One proposal, Kitchen Incubator, was chosen for services at the Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship at Case Western Reserve University.