Ultrahack First Place Winner Team Shares Their Story
Ultrahack 2018 Sprint I was a blast, and we’d like to thank everyone who applied and attended the event! One of the winning teams shared their experience at the innovation contest, the reasons to participate and the outcomes of their victory.
Team RoadsML took part in the Hack the Forest Data track. The challenge was to create a solution for regular citizens, individual or corporate forest owners, forestry companies or public sector based on the nation-wide forest dataset released by Metsäkeskus (Finnish Forest Centre). RoadsML developed a tool that can model how road network is enabling optimal economical utilization of forests in Finland over time. This will allow the industry to plan their wood flow better. It will also help the Finnish Transportation Agency to plan road improvement strategy and budgeting. It will improve forest owners opportunities to sell their wood. Finally it will holistically grow the economic value from forestry and provide a competitive edge for Finland to be the leader in smart forest usage.
The RoadsML project practically got started from the Data Science Project course by the Computer Science Department at the University of Helsinki. Three data science students decided to join Ultrahack in order to score 5 credits for their curriculum and experience the atmosphere of a hackathon. During the Ultrahack weekend we got hopeful about our chances whilst talking to the mentors and partners because we seemed to have exactly what they were looking for. We were still quite surprised when we won the Hack The Forest challenge with our solution.
Nearly two weeks later RoadsML were at Arctic15 with other Ultrahack winners pitching to investors and other attendees at the stage. It was a totally new scene for them, the team was testing our “mad” skills at the dealroom meetings :) raising some genuine interest in some and absolutely no interest in others. RoadsML got advice, contacts and information on how to get forward. “You need a business plan”, “You need a pitching deck”, “You need a business developer”, “Need more validation”. Those were added to the to-do list.
“Our next step is to start a company and get in cooperation with Metsäkeskus to bring our solution to the market,” said a member of the RoadsML team. “We’ll meet the players from the Finnish forest industry and hopefully (definitely) raise some interest at a seminar organized by Metsakeskus in June. Hopes are high again and we realize we need to work hard to achieve them. We’re exited for the future, let’s see what happens. It’s been a great experience so far and for that we’d like to thank you, Ultrahack, Metsäkeskus and Arctic15!”
In October 2018, a few months after Sprint I ended, we heard that RoadsML had successfully finished their pilot with Metsäkeskus. Kudos to the team and good luck with your project in the future!
Blog by Jussi-Pekka, RoadsML, and Valeriya Kushchuk, Ultrahack
