Heart of Georgia to the World Hackathon was held from 1-2 March, 2019 at International Black Sea University,  supported by IBSU, SRDI and Bridge Innovation & Development and Georgian Tourism Association.

There were 3 teams of 5 students from the different programs like Informatics, Tourism, Business Management and Marketing and the winning team was named “Fingerprint”.  The two other teams were “Nature without Borders” and “Late Gang”.  Each of the teams presented marketing plans, web site mock-ups and site maps incorporating the concept of sustainable tourism.  Each team was competing to present the overall concept for the “Black Sea Sustainable Rural Tourism Program” developed by Sustainable Rural Development Ltd., a UK based social enterprise.

The event started on Friday with a presentation by SRDI about the nature of sustainable tourism, why it was important and its cross-cutting effects on the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.On Saturday morning, the teams gathered for a brief introduction among themselves and began working at 9:30AM.  They continued with their work until 6:30PM that night and then made their presentations, wrapping up at about 7:30PM. The teams presented their solutions within the context of the two BSST destinations – Kazbegi and Nukriani. They were guided by mentors . Each team was given 15 minutes for their presentations and 5 minutes for questions.  The jurors – mentors and SRDI representatives – held private discussions with each member assigning points for each criteria that the teams needed to address. The jurors discussed the positive and negative aspects of each team and only then compiled the points. There were Visitors from different countries, Organizers were from Ukraine During the event they presented their ppt about there Organizacion and Goals.

In the end all the participants were awarded with  certificates. The winner team’s, the members were:  Iver gamezardashvili, Giorgi mushkudiani, Giorgi Pirckhalashvili, Luka Minjoraia, Giorgi Bagatelia.

The competition was very close with only a few points separating the winner from the other two times. Each team was very enthusiastic about the event and their work and each presentation was different.  It was a very successful event.