The Media Hackathon ran across three days in Bishkek, 9–11 June 2017, under the theme Безопасный город, безопасная среда — Safe City, Safe Environment. It was co-organised by Youth Council C5+1 and KG Labs Public Foundation, with the American University of Central Asia, the US Embassy in Kyrgyzstan, and Internews Kyrgyzstan as partners, and with media experts and working journalists embedded across the three days. Aziz Soltobaev recorded a short spokesperson interview during the event explaining what the hackathon was for and what teams were being asked to build.
Three public ideation sessions ran in the weeks before the hackathon itself, all recorded on the KG Labs channel. The first session was anchored by Elina Karakulova of Internews Kyrgyzstan and a 48-minute talk from Гульнура Торалиева on what working journalism in Kyrgyzstan was up against; the second ran ninety minutes and the third twenty-one. The opening ceremony of the hackathon proper is also on the channel as a separate forty-nine-minute recording. The point of running the ideation block before the build days was simple: a media hackathon is not a code-and-deploy exercise, and the editorial question — what story does the public actually need served by this tool — has to be settled before any team starts building.
Twelve teams competed across the three days, each producing a short pitch video that remains on the KG Labs channel as part of the Media Hackathon playlist: Бешеные панды, Coal Labs, DNA, Everest, Hardskilled, I Coder, John Doe, Kloop Media, Media Grammars, MMG, Pro KG, and Red Eyes. The Kloop Media entry is the recognisable name in the list — Kloop is Kyrgyzstan’s leading investigative-journalism outlet, and the fact that a working newsroom fielded a team in a civic-tech hackathon told the rest of the room what the organisers had hoped for: the editorial side and the engineering side were prepared to sit in the same room for three days. The awards ceremony itself, hosted with Internews in Kyrgyzstan, ran on 23 October 2017; the full final-pitch video is on the channel.
Aziz Soltobaev’s spokesperson interview from the Media Hackathon, June 2017. The full Media Hackathon playlist on the KG Labs channel also includes the three ideation sessions, the opening ceremony, the twelve team pitches, and the final awards-ceremony recording.
Event Details
| Hackathon | Media Hackathon Bishkek 2017 |
| Theme | Безопасный город, безопасная среда (Safe City, Safe Environment) |
| Dates | 9–11 June 2017 (main event); awards ceremony 23 October 2017 |
| Location | Bishkek |
| Co-organisers | Youth Council C5+1; KG Labs Public Foundation |
| Partners | American University of Central Asia; US Embassy in Kyrgyzstan; Internews Kyrgyzstan; media experts and working journalists |
| Programme structure | Three public ideation sessions in advance; opening ceremony (49 min); three-day team build; awards ceremony 23 Oct 2017 |
| Competing teams (12) | Бешеные панды, Coal Labs, DNA, Everest, Hardskilled, I Coder, John Doe, Kloop Media, Media Grammars, MMG, Pro KG, Red Eyes |
| Channel recording (spokesperson) | youtube.com/watch?v=L400u0t6i5M |
Outcome data — which team prototypes were carried forward by Kloop, Internews, or another outlet after the hackathon — is not in the KG Labs chronological timeline. If you have a follow-up record from any of the twelve teams, it can be added here.