IBM names four Aussie finalists in 2021 Call for Code challenge

The IBM 2021 Call for Code Global Challenge invited software developers and innovators from around the world to team up to address climate change with open source-powered technology. Four Australian teams have been selected as the Asia–Pacific finalists in IBM’s 2021 Call for Code Global Challenge. The solutions developed by the four Australian teams tackle problems from preventing household food waste, through to using Watson AI to support charities in predicting demand for food drives, supporting smallholder farmers against climate events and helping Australians shop more ethically. These solutions were built using open source-powered software, including IBM Cloud, IBM Watson, and data from IBM’s The Weather Company.

The four Australian regional finalists include Honestly, FoodSpot, Plenti and FarmAid. The shortlisted teams will be judged by a panel of local leaders in business, academia, government and NGOs, who will select a winning team for Asia–Pacific. Regional winners will be announced along with the Global and University Challenge winners at the 2021 Call for Code Awards on 16 November 2021, and will receive US$5000. The winners will also receive guidance from IBM and mentors in the Call for Code Community.

Call for Code was launched by IBM, with support from the Linux Foundation and United Nations Human Rights, to work with leading teams to help bring their open source solutions to life through real-world deployments. This year’s global winner will receive hands-on support from IBM, The Linux Foundation and other partners, to deploy their solution.

One of the four Australian regional finalists, Honestly is an online browser extension aimed at helping people make real-time informed decisions to buy more ethically. It acts like an assistant throughout the shopping process, alerting users to any bad news that the brand has been linked to, displaying a list of relevant ratings compiled from external bodies, and benchmarks companies against industry standards.

FoodSpot is a mobile app that helps charity organisers create and plan food drives with impact. Using IBM Watson Discovery, the app generates suggestions in terms of where organisers could create a food drive to target the maximum number of people. It also helps those looking for food drives to see the event details and location. If the event is created through FoodSpot, users can also reserve a spot by ‘claiming a meal’ in the food drive.

Plenti is a mobile application that helps users digitally keep track of the food in their house and uses expiry date approximations to remind people to finish their food on time. Instead of inputting individual items, the app lets users scan their shopping receipt using IBM Watson to build their digital inventory. The app also gives users a view of their food waste in terms of amounts, types of food wasted and costs, to help consumers make smarter decisions.

FarmAid puts AI in the hands of smallholder farmers, giving them alerts and advice on their mobile phones to help them stay ahead of extreme weather events and crop disease outbreaks that threaten their livelihood.

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