And so, the local JunctionX team in Chengdu decided to celebrate this big time (as big as they could, considering the current corona situation). With the support of the Chengdu and Tianfu New Area, the team built an amazing hub for their local participants.
This was the first time that the team took part in building Junction’s yearly flagship event.
The China Hub was located at Tianfu New Area, Chengdu. In addition of being the famous hometown of pandas and a well-known area of spicy foods, Chengdu Tianfu New Area is one of the most thriving innovation and technology centers of west China.
The China Hub gathered over 200 on-site participants from 28 different universities across Chengdu and Chongqing city*. The venue was a multi functional space of a cafe bar, a gym and a yoga studio, redesigned and filled with both Junction decorations and local Chengdu elements.
Besides the hacking, the participants got to take part in various side programs, like a Tai Chi moment out in the fresh air. It was a unique 48-hour long experience for both the participants, as well as the organizers.
“This is epic! I mean, there has been and is a lot of hackathons in China too, but so far, this is for sure the best unique experience me and my team have ever attended”, MingJia Liu — Student of University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC)
The Children Pain Distraction challenge for Helsinki University Hospital by Rovio and HUS was the most popular one among the local participants.
The “The Illogical Lab” team provided an interesting solution by creating a game platform with a system using brain-computer interface technology and VR to help disabled children to play games directly with the commands from their brain. In the demo, player can control the sloth to jump from one tree to another just using simple brain reaction.
“It is not just the atmosphere, but the teamwork and energy in the air just make us want to challenge our self through creation. Also, it is super interesting to communicate and exchange thoughts with hackers all around the world within this cool community”, Haohong Wang — leader of the Illogical Lab team and a member of Combat Robot Alliance of China.
“As the innovation and technology center of west China, Chengdu spots an important role in constructing the “Western Science City of China” together with Chongqing city within the “Dual City Economic Circle”. Meanwhile, Chengdu is the hosting city of the 31st FISU World University Games in 2021.
Talents plays an important role in our development strategy. Through Junction, we want to promote the youth innovation industrial culture and build up an international ecosystem to enhance the talent and innovation collaboration between Chengdu and the world.” — Chengdu representatives
“Co-organizing Junction 2020 Connected was a revolutionary experience for us. We are super content with the whole experience, as our participants all left the event with a big smile on their face. Together with the Junction teams around the world, we are looking forward to building an even better Junction next year.” — JunctionX Chengdu Team
So do we!
*Arranging gatherings of this scale follows the local and national guidelines of Chengdu, China.
