Naples, April 29-30 2017
“The aim of our app is to entertain airplane passengers, who usually get bored during the flight:” with these words the 7 members of the team ‘Pizza Flyers,’ all students from Naples iOS Developer Academy, explained their winning project “Sky Tour.” After an intense 2-day-hackathon over a ‘space weekend’, the mobile application that allows people to read on their smartphone information about cities, places of interest, natural and cultural landmarks that they are flying over, was awarded the first prize, followed by the “BEeSpace” team who came second with their “H.O.M.E. Lab” – a system inspired by beehives aiming at creating better work spaces for people to share – and the “Flying Mice”, third placed with “Cake Home”, a 100% eco-sustainable mobile home, to be used in case of environmental disasters.
This year’s edition in Naples was a huge success: 155 participants, 16 teams, many interesting ideas and projects developed in the new Federico II University facilities, which also hosted the opening event of the third Naples edition of Space Apps. “Southern Italy has a solid reputation for science, with high quality university programs in engineering, technology and mathematics as well as professional institutes and research centers on climate change, aerospace, space exploration, and seismic studies,” said Consul General Mary Ellen Countryman during the opening press conference, when also Naples Federico II University Professor Francesco Marulo and NASA Europe Representative Timothy Tawney delivered remarks.
The exciting news in this year’s edition came from the US Consulate General to Southern Italy, which in addition to providing organizational and logistical support to the event, also offered three cash awards of Euro 1,300, 1,000 and 700 respectively for Naples first, second and third teams.
