Netcraft was a proud sponsor of the inaugural Pacific Youth Hackathon, hosted in Fiji by the U.S. Embassy Youth Council, and put up the cash prize for first place. Congratulations to Fiji's Team CyberSafe, who took it home at the final Pitch Day on 13 April.
The hackathon began with a competitive selection process, and the finalist teams then spent a month building against two themes that matter enormously in the region: cybersecurity, and using technology to tackle drug and substance abuse. Winners earned prizes and professional training opportunities to carry the work further.
Netcraft has engineered internet infrastructure in the Pacific for decades from our Suva office, and security is a growing part of that work — so a generation of young Pacific technologists choosing to spend a month on these problems is exactly what we want to back. The talent on show at Pitch Day made the sponsorship an easy decision to repeat.
Vinaka vakalevu to the Embassy Youth Council and our fellow partners — Telecom Fiji, NiuPay, the Pacific Community (SPC), Cyber Acads and Crespire — and congratulations again to Team CyberSafe. The U.S. Embassy's write-up of the event has the full story.