Business

Hack The Hub to focus on fintech challenges this weekend

L-R: Fiona Browne, Datactics' head of software development; Conor Graham, Hack The Hub founder; Jillian Keenan, former hackathon winner; Matthew Flenley, Datactics; and Clare Guinness, Innovation City Belfast.
L-R: Fiona Browne, Datactics' head of software development; Conor Graham, Hack The Hub founder; Jillian Keenan, former hackathon winner; Matthew Flenley, Datactics; and Clare Guinness, Innovation City Belfast.

SOFTWARE developers and tech insiders will gather in Belfast this weekend as the city hosts the return of the ‘Hack The Hub’ event.

The competition, styled as a ‘hackathon’, brings seasoned developers and students together to come up with new ideas and solutions.

This year’s event will focus on the north’s thriving fintech sector, by analysing challenges within the burgeoning industry.

Hack The Hub founder Conor Graham said the Belfast event will take inspiration from the major ‘Money 20/20’ conference, to explore topics such as trust, identity and using data to predict credit risk.

“We are incredibly excited to be hosting another #HackTheHub event on October 15, bringing together some of the best minds in the industry for an exciting and innovative day,” said Mr Graham.

“Financial technology, or ‘fintech’ is a term used to describe the convergence of finance and technology. Right now, it’s one of the most rapidly growing industries in the world, but it can be hard to keep up with all of the changes.

“Money 20/20 was a big inspiration for this year’s hackathon as it was clear that there were a number of challenges being faced in areas such as open banking, trust and payments. So working with some of the leading fintech players in the ecosystem, we have set the teams a challenge focused around this.”

The sold out event will take place at Lanyon Quay on Saturday, hosted by headline sponsor and data quality specialist, Datactics

Fiona Browne, head of software development and ML at Datactics, said: “Collaboration, ground-breaking innovation, ambition, and great service is core to Datactics as it is to #HackTheHub where we tackle complex challenges around data in the Fintech sector. This coupled with a community event is why we continue to sponsor and support #HackTheHub.

“As a company in scale phase, we are moving quickly and #HackTheHub offers the perfect opportunity for us to network and engage with great technologists, designers across muti-disciplines. We value innovative ideas, clear objectives, community, and collaboration and are looking forward to seeing how the teams rise to the Fintech challenge at this Hackathon.”

Previous hackathon winner Jillian Keenan said the connections developed at the event had been invaluable.

“A lot of the people I met are people that I’m still in contact with and meet up with at other events. It also allowed me to reconnect with some people that I hadn’t seen for a great deal of time due to the pandemic, which was special for me,” said the software engineer.

Those attending without a team will be linked up with others who have complimentary skills and experience levels will be distributed to allow students and experts to work together.

This event is currently sold out but you can join the waiting list via hackthehub.com