PHOTOS (Above left): Participants in action during Barrick Gold's BattleBorn event in Nevada; (above right) Barrick Gold CIO Michelle Ash opens Unearthed 2017, Toronto. Both photos courtesy Unearthed.
Technology and mining leaders, competitors, observers, students and start-up entrepreneurs converged in Las Vegas for Barrick Gold’s BattleBorn – a series of boot camps, a 54-hour hackathon, and a start-up exchange.
President of Barrick USA, Michael Brown, said Barrick was at the forefront of transforming traditional mining with digital technologies, and the company was excited to host Nevada’s first global mining hackathon.
Participants were charged with tackling one of the four challenges:
Barrick Gold joined forces with Cisco, Switch and Unearthed to provide the innovation and tech community in Nevada, USA, with a premier opportunity to build skills, scale ventures and engage with great talent.
BattleBorn, a name inspired by the Nevada state flag, was created by the CEEC sponsor to infuse the mining industry with bold ideas and exponential technologies. BattleBorn includes a series of boot camps, a 54-hour hackathon, and a start-up exchange, that will bring together competitors, observers, industry leaders and start-ups.
Michael Brown, President of Barrick USA said Barrick was excited to host the state’s first global mining hackathon in Las Vegas.
“We are at the forefront of transforming traditional mining with digital technologies, and we look forward to bringing our technology partners to Las Vegas to work with talented innovators and generate fresh ideas for our industry,” he said.
The hackathon was a 54-hour, high-intensity programming competition for participants to solve innovation challenges in the mining industry. A panel of judges evaluated the potential applicability to real-world industry. Prizes were awarded to the top teams. Silicon Foundry, an innovation platform with deep ties in Silicon Valley, offered a winning team exposure to its network and star-up best practices.
Participants were charged with tackling one of four challenges:
- Watt’s it to you? Track power consumption, distribution and loss to identify areas of power usage can be reduced.
- Time’s running out! Provide real-time information on commodity use to Barrick and its vendors to ensure critical reagents are on site.
- Gather risk – develop a tool to continuously assess social, political and economic events.
- Identify me! Can you locate and identify malfunctioning equipment within a mine site.
CEEC advocate Chih-Ting Lo (pictured above) was at BattleBorn and describes the experience.
“It was an amazing experience at BattleBorn Hackathon by Barrick Gold Corporation and Unearthed. So impressed by all the new ideas form 19 teams in 52 hours. Congratulations everyone and I’m excited to see how some of these ideas can progress!” she said.
“Personally the cherry on top is the two energy teams mentored won two of the four awards. Congratulations IntelliMine for winning the hackathon on the gamification tool to improve efficiency and productivity and JCMS for winning the young innovator award on a smart ventilation solution.”
BattleBorn, a name inspired by the Nevada flag, was created to infuse the mining industry with bold ideas and exponential technologies. Barrick Chief Innovation Officer Michelle Ash said the event enabled participants to build skills and engage with talent.
“Thank you to our awesome partners Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Silicon Foundry, Switch and Unearthed,” she said.