Similarly to various counter-parts with the 'Hack' suffix, CycleHack is a intensive weekend event in which cyclists, developers, designers and makers gather in cities around the world to combine brain power in the very noble pursuit of tackling issues facing cyclists today.
Taking place this year on the weekend of 19-21 June, the Hack has already seen groups from 25 cities sign up including Amsterdam, Vancouver, Gijon, Glasgow and Bengaluru. With little over a month to go until the event, anyone interested in getting involved can join a local Hack or sign up to host event.
Now in its second year, the CycleHack movement was born when Scotland based designers and social thinkers/doers Sarah Drummond, Matthew Lowell, and Johanna Holtan felt the need to open up the debates around cycling and create new ways for riders to tackle the issues they face on the roads. By creating a cross-disciplinary platform for the rapid development of tangible prototypes – or 'CycleHacks' – to improve the experience of cycling, the team hope to show how some of the barriers to recruiting more people to two-wheel transportation can be overcome; with all the safety, sustainability and fitness benefits that that entails.
Over the 48 hours of the Hack, CycleHackers will work together to brainstorm challenges associated with cycling, develop ideas to solve these issue, and actively build prototypes to test their solutions. All ideas will be showcased at the end of the weekend and then uploaded to the Global Cyclehack Catalogue – an open source website where all ideas created can be shared and used in cities all around the world.
The first CycleHack in 2014, took place in Glasgow, Beirut and Melbourne, with over 150 participants contributing to an impressive 31 hacks for improving the cycling experience. One of the hacks 'Penny in Your Pants' even found some serious internet fame – the project's video demonstrating a simple, lo-fi way of making skirts more 'bikeable' fetching over 3 million views.
With the movement spreading far across the globe this year, CycleHack 2015 has some great potential to offer up some more inspiring hacks for life in the cycle-lane.
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