On 2 December 2016, a press conference at the Sputnik Kyrgyzstan Multimedia Center in Bishkek announced a forty-eight-hour tourism hackathon, intended to produce new digital tools for promoting Kyrgyzstan as a destination.
On the panel were Azamat Zhamankulov, Deputy Minister-Director of the Department of Tourism at the Ministry of Culture, Information and Tourism; Zhodar Saidilkanov, representing the JIA business association; Aziz Soltobaev, founder of the KG Labs public foundation; and Kai Isand, coordinator of Garage48, the Estonian hackathon platform that was bringing its method to Bishkek for the event.
The format announced was a continuous forty-eight hours of work by teams drawn from Kyrgyzstan, Estonia, and Russia, building startups, mobile applications, and websites around the tourism brief. Twenty projects were to be selected for further development, with up to one hundred thousand dollars in private investor financing earmarked for the strongest.
Zhamankulov framed the hackathon as a meeting point: «Tourists need information about the state and services,» he said. «The hackathon provides a platform for people to expand information about Kyrgyzstan.» Soltobaev’s contribution pointed at the same gap — that new projects could help tourists worldwide learn more about what Kyrgyzstan as a destination actually offered, beyond the existing Issyk-Kul region online booking platform that was operational at the time.
The press conference was the announcement; the hackathon itself was to follow.
Sources: Sputnik Kyrgyzstan, 2 December 2016 (two items covering the same press conference): ru.sputnik.kg/20161202/turistov-v-kyrgyzstan-hotyat-privlech-novymi-tekhnologiyami-1030579996.html and ru.sputnik.kg/20161202/foto-s-press-konferencii-posvyashchennoj-novym-metodam-razvitiya-turizma-v-kr-1030582021.html.