Climathon is a 24-hour fast paced global hackathon style event that’s focussed on solving meaningful climate change problems.  
Organised by Climate-KIC, it’s planned to take place simultaneously in major cities around the world on 28 October 2016.   The inaugural 2015 Canberra event was a huge success, with the winning 2015 Canberra team being selected by Climate-Kic to present their ideas in Paris at COP21.  The Climathon team are now looking for ACT organisers to run the 2016 event.  
The event brings together students, tech wizards, story tellers, entrepreneurs, policy makers, and civic society enthusiasts to work together in teams over 24 hours to explore, mash up, ideate and communicate solutions to climate change problems.
The challenge is to develop innovative and cost-effective solutions to accelerate Canberra’s energy transition and address critical issues potentially exacerbated by climate change. Solutions will ideally be scalable across Australia and could traverse the technology, science, economics, policy, and communication spectrum.
Participants can come along with a pre-existing idea and work with a team to develop this during the 24 hours, or can develop an idea on the day.
After 24 intense hours of collaboration, excitement and solution-finding, the best idea is be selected by a jury consisting of relevant local stakeholders.
More than anything Climathon is an instigator of new connections and an incubator of ideas.  At last year's event there was creativity and collaboration with people, projects and ideas. Over 60 participants recognised that the real problems of climate change in 2015 are not technological but social and political. Their ideas reflected that by addressing issues as diverse as redefining energy, changing media narratives and promoting soil and water management.
Josh Petrass took part in the 2015 Climathon and was on the winning team, Certified Renewable.   “At Climathon 2015 I met a bunch of great people and we came up with an idea. Since then, we have won funding for the idea (from InnovationACT) and been to Paris to present the idea during COP21”, he said.   “The journey so far has been great.”
To find out more about being part of this global movement, visit http://climathoncanberra.strikingly.com/, read the Guardian's write-up of last year's event
If you are interested in taking on a role organising this inspiring event, contact Julia at julia.talbot-jones@anu.edu.au.   Organisers take the lead in managing the event, raising funds, attracting speakers / mentors / prizes, promotion and follow up assistance to the winning teams.
You can read more about last year’s winners here.