The Water Ideathon is an initiative of Armenian and American partners that will mobilize a wide array of actors to come up with new ideas to help solve Armenia's water resource management challenges. The Ideathon will be held June 11-12, 2016 at the TUMO Center in Yerevan, Armenia. Here you can download an event brochure and a document with the full details and rules of the Ideathon event.
At the Ideathon, interdisciplinary teams will be given about 24 hours to develop their information technology, policy, or engineering solution to a problem statement centered around water resource management in Armenia. At the end of the 24 hours, teams will pitch their idea to a review panel and one winning team will be selected in each of the categories. The team members will receive a cash award from Ideathon partners as well as a non-monetary package comprised of incubation, mentorship, and software or cloud solutions.
Interdisciplinary teams who are interested in participating in the Water Ideathon need to fill Expressions of Interest (EOI). Applicants must submit EOIs to USAID by completing the application form in Google Forms here:
Applicants must submit EOIs to USAID no later than 11:59pm on June 05, 2016. EOIs must be submitted in English.
While the Ideathon is primarily aimed at adults, youth teams are also highly encouraged to submit EOIs. Minimum participant age is 14 years old.
Before submitting an EOI, teams are highly encouraged to attend a knowledge presentation on May 24, 2016 on the social, economic, and technical challenges facing the water sector and water resource management, hosted by USAID at the Microsoft Innovation Center (MIC). The presentation will be conducted by USAID’s Advanced Science & Partnerships for Integrated Resource Development (ASPIRED) project. The ASPIRED team will deliver a 30 minute presentation, followed by a 30 minute Q&A session. While attendance is optional, USAID highly encourages all teams interested in applying for the Water Ideathon to attend the seminar. If you will attend, please confirm your attendance to Patrick Meyer at pmeyer@usaid.gov by May 22, 2016. Additional details are located in the attached document.
Additionally, semifinalists will also be invited to attend a series of Pre-event Knowledge Seminars on June 7-9. On these days, USAID and its partners will host three 1-hour presentations, on information technology, policy, or engineering to which semifinalists are strongly encouraged to attend.
Please read the attached document for full event details, as well as pre-event and post-event activity details, and feel free to send any questions to Patrick Meyer at pmeyer@usaid.gov.
