The #CreateTogether Hackathon brought innovators, technologists, entrepreneurs and creatives to Armenia from all around the world. The marathon coding event was a meetup of like-minded hackers and non-hackers alike intended to transform ideas into reality via mobile and web apps, services and products! The Hackathon coined partnerships with the CreateTogether team - a Silicon Valley based HyeTech community, Microsoft Innovation Center in Armenia and PicsArt. Read more

In 2016 Kolba Lab organized and held the country’s first Open Data Hackathon – a two-day event which saw Armenia’s growing array of IT specialists focus their energies on creating useful services and products out of government-owned data. The winning teams, providing information of electricity prices and the spread of diseases, were further incubated at Kolba. Read More

Kolba Lab has teamed up with Yerevan Municipality, Union of Employers in ICT, Airesvalley Development Foundation to host the first in its kind Smart City Data Hackathon for Yerevan Municipality. A 24-hour Smart City Hackathon has mobilized 90+ experts to design solutions on condominium management, waste collection and quality of life. Read more

Social Innovation Camp brings together ideas, people and digital tools to build web-based solutions to real life social problems – all in just 48 hours. These ideas challenge conventional wisdom and create new tech-enabled models for solving social problems. Prototyped solutions included TaghInfo hyperlocal news platform and I-Like peer-to-peer services map.

Active participants, inspiring facilitators, fantastic ideas, enthusiasm, fun, networking, all in one place called Mardamej: SICamp Reload. Six teams have competed for Mardamej Anticorruption Awards prototyping solutions like Virtual Blood Bank for Armenia and IMngo kindergarten application. Read More

Kolba Lab has opened a call for ideas to confront the defining climate challenge of our generation. User-driven solutions were collected to support the development of early warning systems across Armenia to design responses in both short-term/rapid onset climatic hazards, as well as long-term/slow onset hazards. Prototyped solutions included a high-density network of sensors that will provide a source of big and open data on a range of environmental indicators (air/soil humidity and temperature, air pressure, noise, light, etc.) Read More

How can we make our healthcare services more user-oriented? Kolba Lab has crowdsourced a call for innovative technological solutions to address healthcare issues in Armenia. Prototyped solutions included a mobile app for kids with autism disorder, a web calculator for state-subsidized healthcare services and an app connecting doctors and patients. Read More

Kolba Lab has initiated the very first Public Sector Innovation Week (#PSIWeek) in Armenia. Through a full week of platforms and events, engaging public and private sectors and ordinary citizens we’ve explored and discussed what public sector innovation is and how we can achieve it. Read More

Kolba lab spent two days with the staff of the Ministry of Education in a pop-up lab to help public service innovators to design and test new ideas. Read more

An internal idea competition among public servants allowed to elicit ideas on optimizing policies in education. Prototyped solutions include e-admission platform for secondary schools, CareerLab for students and employers and a project learning platform for secondary schools.

In order to empower reform and innovation-oriented public servants/change agents and challenge the stereotype of “traditional bureaucracy,” Kolba has organized a TEDx event on public sector innovation with a line-up of high-level public servants as speakers, including Armen Harutyunyan, DM of Agriculture, Hayk Harutyunyan, DM of Energy Infrastructure and Natural Resources and Siranush Sahakyan, Chairperson of the Ethics Commission of High-Ranking Officials. Read more

When you think of public governance process, what do you think of? The perceptions can be a bit of a ‘black box’ that we invite you to open! We believe that the shift to information technology, open data and smart analytics in business industries has power to improve governance processes. That’s why we explored how best practices from business and tech industries can be applied in public governance, what changes can we expect, and how policymakers and citizens should respond. Read More

The very first social ventures supported by Kolba Lab included Seeing Hands - a massage salon, which employs people with sight disorders as massage therapists; TaTa Kindergarten - a new solution in child care to address the needs of working mothers and Byurakan Chir - dry food social enterprise in the highlands of Armenia. Incubation of Social Start-ups Read More

On October 28, 2015, the global forum of the Open Government Partnership initiative kicked off in Mexico City. Armenia participated for the first time in the competition and won a top award among the countries of the Asian-South Pacific region. Armenia came up with the “Creation and introduction of community management and development-oriented information systems in regional administrations” initiative. A program referred to as “Smart community” (Smart Municipality) is meant to increase efficiency in the activities of Armenia’s local self-governance authorities and improve public services based on the principles open governance. Read more

The very first social ventures supported by Kolba Lab included Seeing Hands - a massage salon, which employs people with sight disorders as massage therapists; TaTa Kindergarten - a new solution in child care to address the needs of working mothers and Byurakan Chir - dry food social enterprise in the highlands of Armenia. Incubation of Social Start-ups Read More

Creative Game, called Methodology of Systemic Thought-Activity coined by Russian philosopher Georgiy Shchedrovitsky, is a scenario building exercise with a committed group of stakeholders and experts on the analysis and creative solutions towards a given issue. 60 experts and visionaries came together to identify corruption challenges and to imagine alternative scenarios of tackling them.

Kolba Lab used the Creative Game (Systemic Thought Activity) model to generate scenarios for future governance models. Read more

Planning for the next five-year cycle of the UN’s engagement with Armenia, we have experimented with scenario planning and, most importantly, including the voice of citizens through a foresight methodology called FutureScaper. By placing the citizen in the driver’s seat, we can explore more inclusive scenarios, composed of current trends and their short- and long-term impacts. Read More

In the framework of “Future Skills and Jobs” project we conducted foresight sessions in 4 targeted regions of the project. The foresight on creative industries took place in Shirak region. We gathered around 60 creatives under one roof for 2-day discussions on future changes in the labor market in this field and received a number of ideas and suggestions, which will serve as a guidebook to plan for the future skill development activities. Read More

We organized a future modeling/foresight session in the field of tourism for Lori region. The session was led by Skolkovo School of Management specialists, and it was based on the same methodology as in “Atlas of Emerging Jobs” research. The aim of the session was to foresee the future profession changes taking into account the potential of the region.

The foresight session with experts took place for the region of Gegharkunik to predict and prepare for the future changes in the labor market. The topic for the region was agriculture, which opened many other doors for other industries through it. Productive discussions led to preparing several scenarios for the future of the region.

The topic for Tavush region was high value agricultural products and food processing. In result of three-day intensive discussions and hard work the participants ended up creating several scenarios for the future of Tavush. We will continue working on making the best scenarios into reality.