History Meets Innovation: Remembering the Past and Shaping the Future Through Data
NOVEMBER 4, 2015 • News Advisory
HPE and Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Announce Winners of Israels First Big Data Hackathon
Israel, October 27, 2015 Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) today announces the winners of the History Meets Innovation Hackathon, an innovative extension of the ongoing partnership between HPE and Yad Vashem, the world center for Holocaust Remembrance. Selected by an esteemed panel of judges, the winners used HPE Big Data Solutions to uncover new ways of presenting and understanding over one petabyte of unstructured data stored in Yad Vashems archives.
The event was hosted at the Yad Vashem center in Jerusalem, Israel, and was opened to developers, students and HPE employees in Israel. The two-week long Hackathon attracted more than 200 participants, who were tasked with developing code and creating a digital application experience which enables data stored in the Yad Vashem archives to be more accessible globally through HPEs Big Data Solutions.
Using HPE IDOL OnDemand APIs, which helps derive maximum value in an accessible and social media friendly way, the teams analyzed thousands of hours of audio and video content, as well as text and images, with the goal of keeping history alive for the next generation and preserving the memory of the Holocaust through the use of technology.
The winning project Testimonies Become Searchable enables direct, coordinated and accurate searchability for the huge number of testimonials accumulated by Yad Vashem. To achieve this, the team created a technology that instantaneously made a match between the written testimonial and the media file linked to it.
Testimonies to the ADHD Generation, which placed second, enables quick archive accessibility by cutting long testimonials into short videos with enriched content. With peoples attention spans significantly decreasing, this team recognized that one of the major challenges facing Yad Vashem was how to make the vast number of testimonials accessible to the ADHD generation. To overcome this, the team decided to take the long volume of testimonials and divide them into short ones that can be incorporated into enriched data, such as pictures, maps and Wikipedia etc.
Testimonies in Context:An Interactive Timeline placed third, and integrates Yad Vashem testimonials with chronological information from the Second World War and the Holocaust, thus enabling a more complete historical picture. By integrating the different layers of data, users improve their understanding of events by being able to make connections between all events and activities.
Yad Vashem is relentless in its pursuit of innovation in the service of memory. For decades, we have looked for ways to make our immense archives and collections, which we have amassed over the years, more easily accessible to a global audience,said Avner Shalev, Yad Vashem Chairman."Against this backdrop, working with HPE we set the challenge of trying to find technological ideas and solutions that would provide accessibility to survivor testimonies from the Yad Vashem collections. Through these efforts, we hope to bring the voices and stories of each individual survivor to the masses."
The rapid evolution of technology resulting in opportunities to capture value from data that has been inaccessible in the past,said Raffi Margaliot, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Application Delivery Management, HPE Software.At HPE, we are committed to using our technology products and expertise to help businesses and the wider society realize these realities, and through our work with Yad Vashem weve been able to achieve this. For 70 years they have listened, gathered, protected, digitized and curated all this information, and by opening access to some of the worlds most important historical records weve helped their data come alive.
About Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance Center, was established in 1953. Located in Jerusalem, it is dedicated to Holocaust remembrance, documentation, research and education. Yad Vashem houses the world's largest archive of Holocaust related material. For the past two decades the institution has invested in developing and maintaining comprehensive online databases with millions of people using various platforms to access information.
About Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is an industry leading technology company that enables customers to go further, faster. With the industrys most comprehensive portfolio, spanning the cloud to the data center to workplace applications, our technology and services help customers around the world make IT more efficient, more productive and more secure. More information about HPE(NYSE:HPE) is available at https://www.hpe.com
2015 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HPE products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HPE shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.