Radio is the primary source of news for many Africans. There are more than 800 million radios while close to 70% of Africans have access to a mobile phone. These teeming number of people no doubt will need access to different types of content ranging from politics, entertainment, fashion to sports information and many more.
In this vein, a hackathon event is being organised by the BBC Connected Studio, BBC World Service and BBC News labs in connection with Rlab in Cape Town, South Africa from April 23-24 2015.
The aim of the event is to generate ideas and explore technologies for new ways to distribute BBC audio content to an African audience, in ways that are relevant to the market. According to BBC, the event will focus on the tech community (both locally and a global scale). Teams applying should be composed of developers and designers with UX skills.
“Ahead of the Development Studio, we’ll be holding a briefing event on the evening of 20th April 2015, where we’ll expand on what we’re looking for at the hack and we’ll give some short tech talks regarding the platforms and APIs available to use. It will also be a chance for teams to meet each other and the experts ahead of the hack,” an excerpt reads about the hackathon.
The hackathon event will be used to develop imaginative and relevant channels (utilizing complementary technologies Raspberry Pi’s, BBC content, Radiodan etc) to distribute content that improves audience experience.
To be selected for the event, interested tech companies should register here. However, they need to send two recent samples of their work to the following email address connectedstudio@bbc.co.uk. To find out more on the challenge go here.
Photo Credit: Bernhard Benke via Compfight cc
