Over 24 hours and Eight Projects Later, Jakarta's International Space Apps Challenge Winners Announced

After a grueling 24 hours, the winners of Jakarta's International Space Apps Challenge were announced at @america on Sunday. Eight teams and individuals had presented on stage at the venue including one participant who flew in from Singapore. While some had remarked that the challenges had been particularly difficult, they pressed on and sought assistance from others around the world to make sure they can do the utmost to find a technological solution to the tasks at hand.

From the eight, two will be submitted to the global Space Apps Challenge competition and judged against others from the 24 other cities around the world. Given the scope of the challenges and the limited time provided, the teams were expected only to present prototypes and the progress that they've achieved.

Selected as the judges' favorite was HXLator by Fauzan Emmerling, a tool to convert data from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet into Humanitarian Exchange Language, a format that can be read and used by people working on humanitarian efforts around the world in a more meaningful way. Due to the variety of organizations, methods, and tools used in humanitarian efforts, data submitted to the United Nations and its partners come in various forms.

The HXL project aims to translate those formats into one commonly understood format. Emmerling had worked with partners in Lausanne, Switzerland, over the course of two days in developing this solution and he admitted that it had only been half finished when it was time to present. The project was also submitted to the Space Apps competition in Lausanne.

Second place winner is HXL Exporter by James Kachiro Sarumaha. This project is identical to the HXLator by Fauzan Emmerling but was developed separately and from a different approach.  HXL Exporter won ahead of HXLator as it was ahead in terms of completeness.

The winner of the top prize for Space Apps Jakarta is Travelisa by Kristiono Setyadi and Panggi Libersa. Travelisa is an application to keep track of an individual's travel history, distance, and methods and determine the impact it has on the individual as well as the wider community. The results of the collected data is expected to influence the individual's travel behavior by discovering the most efficient means to travel. The app can also determine the carbon emission of individuals based on their methods of travel. The completed app will work on Android and iOS devices.

Following the local winners announcements, two projects will be submitted to the global challenge and winners will be announced on May 17. More information about the International Space Apps Challenge can be found on the competition's website as well as the Jakarta event's blog.

As part of the Jakarta International Space Apps Challenge organizing committee, DailySocial would like to thank our event partners, the U.S Embassy and @atamerica, as well as our sponsors, Yahoo! Indonesia, Dell, Infinys Systems, Coca Cola, Starbucks, and Citi Trans, without which the event could not have happened the way it did, so thank you again to everyone involved.

Thank you also to our judges, Narenda Wicaksono, senior software developer; Heriyadi Janwar from Microsoft; and Didi Satiadi from LAPAN.

A special thank you to Ali Llewellyn from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas who made the trip to Jakarta to attend, supervise, and partake in the two day event and help made it possible.