Mining hackathon reveals SA gems

The Unearthed global innovation programme last week hosted over a hundred Cape Town entrepreneurs and innovators to develop prototype solutions for some of the world’s largest resource companies.

What first started out in Perth, Australia, the Unearthed hackathon events are unique 54-hour long activities focused on the resources sector.

A total of 17 teams were formed to solve one of the different problems faced by companies like De Beers and Anglo American. Some of these challenges included real-time particle analysis, using sound to detect the end of a mine and predicting what the future of mining looks like.

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“Technology implementation costs time and money — two critical resources that the mining sector currently requires to reinvent itself. The Unearthed Hackathon is the perfect platform to fast-track innovation and short-circuit this process,” said Jeannette McGill, Head of Technology and Innovation at Anglo American.

According to a recent press release sent to Ventureburn, the winning team consisted of software engineers Pieter Holtzhausen (pictured above left) and Albert Swart. The pair was recognised for developing a clever visualisation of offshore diamond mining analytics for De Beers and awarded R10 000.

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“We are very excited to head to Mining Indaba, but first I want to improve this before I demonstrate it! So I am keen to give an even better demon at Indaba,” said Holtzhausen.

The Runners Up were Team Codeswop, consisting of Tiaan Hendriks, Dean Harber and Regardt Nel who addressed the end of mine sound analysis challenge from De Beers and received R8 000. The Young Innovator Award went to Team “#MakingWavelets” who also took a novel approach to the end of mine sound analysis challenge from De Beers. They received R5 000 for their efforts.