From left: Ciarán Coyle from Ulster Bank with Xin Wang, Robert Creaner, Kieran Hannon, Reshmi Goff, Kaustubh Labhe and Sppali Lanka. Image: Shane O’Neill Photography
Collaborative disruption to reign at upcoming Ulster Bank-Dogpatch Labs open banking hackathon.
An estimated 200 coders, developers, designers, businesspeople and entrepreneurs from technology, banking and academia, among other sectors, are to come together in the name of open banking.
They will take part in the Ulster Bank-Dogpatch Labs open banking hackathon that will take place on Friday 13 April.
‘We view disruption as a huge opportunity for us to engage and collaborate for the benefit of customers’
– CIARÁN COYLE
Attendees will work in teams over three days to develop concepts to improve the banking experience and ‘hack’ these together to create operable and viable propositions to benefit customers.
The future of open banking
Attending hackers will focus on three propositions: home buying and ownership, the business of banking, and Ulster Bank start-up (an internal employee category as part of the bank’s intrapreneurship programme).
Participants will have access to a host of supports at Dogpatch Labs, including rich and wide-ranging APIs, engineering support, industry mentors (including support from Microsoft, Nile and ViewsDX), and pitching workshops so that they can not only imagine and create groundbreaking solutions, but they can also communicate these to the judges.
The event culminates in competitive pitches to the judging panel, which is made up of Ciarán Coyle, chief administration officer, Ulster Bank; Paddy Flynn, director of geo data operations, Google Ireland; Ian McLaughlin, managing director of home buying and ownership, RBS; Patrick Walsh, managing director, Dogpatch Labs; and Amelia Casey, chief of staff, Ulster Bank.
Participation in the hackathon has grown steadily over the last number of years, with 100 attendees in 2016, more than 150 last year and a fully subscribed event for 2018.
“Our annual hackathon puts the spirit of collaborative disruption into action and allows us to engage actively in the open banking and entrepreneurial spaces,” said Coyle.
“Each year, the participants in the hackathon take fresh and exciting approaches, inspiring us to re-evaluate the ways in which we operate and how we harness change. We view disruption as a huge opportunity for us to engage and collaborate for the benefit of customers.”
