Using technology to create new solutions that have social impact grew out of Datacom’s desire to support local communities while also creating sustainable social enterprise ideas.
Over the weekend of 26 and 27 August, over 300 participants gathered at Datacom’s new building in the heat of the Wynyard Innovation Precinct on Auckland’s waterfront. Over 48 hours, participants created solutions to solve some tricky real-world problems. Participants included Datacom people from across Australasia, as well as customers, volunteers, and design students from Unitec, Media Design School and Manukau Institute of Technology.
First prize went to Team Happy Life for charity Child Matters which provides adult training to help prevent child abuse. The idea is an app that can help reduce the paperwork burden required to get government funding, and correlate information collected with actual governmental concern data to help tackle and prevent abuse across New Zealand. Team Happy Life decided to donate their $2,000 prize money to the Child Matters charity.
Second prize went to Team Desgenerates utilising the Datacom payroll services app. Charities need exposure and funds, and employers want charitable alignment to build employee engagement. By creating a giving function within the payroll app, employees across a range of industries can donate money at any time to the charity of their choice, as many times and they like and change who they donate to at any time.
Third prize went to Team Making Datacom Magnificent who wanted to improve the experience for children, parents and healthcare workers in hospitals. Using the idea of ‘track and trace’ technology, kids are electronically checked in and out of services and locations using a wrist band device. Parents can rest easy, receiving notifications that their child has finished at radiology and is en route to the ward so they can time their return to the ward to be there for their child.
As Greg Davidson, A/NZ CEO of Datacom said;
“Datacomp is a way of exploring beyond the tight bounds of the customer engagements that we usually operate in, to different ways of working. It’s amazing what happens when people are asked to achieve something in short time frames, it can be incredibly galvanising. It shows that our people can come together to co-create solutions and get results quickly. It’s a way of uncovering and fostering an entrepreneurial spirit.”