Activity A.3: The Hackathon

The "How can the sea become a bond, rather than a barrier?" hackathon session included the following sessions.

Some examples of funded international projects seeking to tap into the potential of the sea and to minimize its obstacles were shared, to let participants draw some inspiration for the following phase.

Participants were engaged in a number of discussions about how marine and maritime environments could affect or be affected by human activities, including traveling, energy-production, research, social and cultural interactions, training and knowledge transfer. Interestingly, in addition to the common issues with often appear on the political agendas of national governments, the result of the hackathon also included elements which seem to be relevant for local communities and help improve the potential interactions between the alliance and the local context.

In particular, the following issued were identified:

1. Environmental awareness (or rather, the lack thereof) seems to be identified as a source of both tangible issues connected to human activities and resulting in environmental degradation, but also an element that affects the mindset and sensitivity of people.
2. The sea is rarely perceived as a barrier by coastal communities. Unlike some part of society and the media claim, the sea is mostly seen as a place where memories are created, where people interact and as a bridge that connects coasts, not to mention a potential endless source of energy and possibly the best route for trading large amounts of goods.
3. The uncoordinated approach to coastal and marine infrastructure development is an issue that concerns most of the communities.
4. Remarkably, coastal and island communities often do not perceive migration as a significant concern.  This might suggest that issues of unregulated and irregular migration can be greatly “mediatized” and inflated for political and mass communication reasons, in particular in the Mediterranean Basin.
5. Surprisingly, university research is rarely perceived as essential to create solutions for local critical issues. The disconnection between the academia and the local communities suggests a gap between the development of knowledge and the needs of the community.

As such, much needs to be done to reverse this perspective.

1. Technological development and digital tools are mostly perceived as useful. Despite the common perception that the rise of technology has resulted in social isolation and a poorer dialogue between people, technology applied to data sharing and entertainment may both serve as an interesting platform to share useful information among governments and organizations, and to improve the level of engagement of both students and teaching staff, respectively.

Participants were divided into groups and collaboratively designed actions to pursue the objectives identified during the previous session.

Each group pitched its own action proposal to the rest of the audience, In particular:

• The first project (“Guardians of the deep”) focused on the development of a strategy game for one or multiple players designed to educate and train kids and adults to manage marine resources and biodiversity, for the aim of raising awareness on the complexity of the marine and maritime environments.
• The second project (“ISOU”) focused on the need to expose the activities which contribute to environmental degradation and develop an International Sea and Ocean Unity to promote environmental activities for children, social media awareness and the use of VR/AR/AI tools to enhance project results.
• The third project (“Data net”) focused on the development of digital infrastructures to bridge the physical gap of the sea and help governments and communities gather data and information useful to develop more sensible and consistent policies, possibly shared and jointly developed.

All the projects included a list of potential stakeholders to engage and major attention was paid to the engagement of new generations. By highlighting the issues at stake, the potential solutions and the target groups/stakeholders to be involved, the three actions developed by participants may eventually complement the Alliance’s activities as a first step to engage local communities.