Reboot The Earth was planned as a social coding event to bring budding computer programmers, scientists and interested parties together under the auspices of the United Nations to improve upon or to build new software program.

The Sunway iLabs team with Dr. Elizabeth Lee, CEO of Sunway Education Group, YB Syed Saddiq, Minister of Youth and Sport, and Evan Cheah, Vice President of Sunway Group, after the opening ceremony.

This hackathon was open to members of the public above the age of 18 with interest in innovation, technology and climate change. Participants were of different ages ranging from 18 to 30 years. The hackathon attracted a mix of college and university students, fresh graduates and working adults. 20-30 teams competed with team sizes varying from solo to four members.

Students formed groups, utilizing the open workspace at iLabs, Menara Sunway, and worked till wee hours of the morning.

Through a series of Tech Challenges by UNTIL held consecutively in four continents, Reboot the Earth provided young people, mainly tertiary students of different backgrounds such as tech, computer science, business and sustainability, with a platform to showcase their expertise in developing solutions based on climate change data. Participants were encouraged to localise solutions. Data points considered included: increase of temperature, changes in weather patterns, as a general overview over set geographic locations. Participants were given freedom of choice regarding technology, development tools and platform selection. Scoring emphasised the impact of the solution rather than technical expertise.

Present: YB Syed Saddiq, Minister of Youth and Sports, Evan Cheah, Vice President of Sunway Group, Dr. Elizabeth Lee, CEO of Sunway Education Group, Matthijs Van Leeuwen, Director of Sunway iLabs, and UNTIL team alongside the participants of Rebooth the Earth at the opening ceremony, gathering for a group photo..

Mentors coached participants to better understand the problem at hand and helping them to better gauge the feasibility of their solutions; no technical mentorship was provided. Some of the local issues students looked at were illegal deforestation, illegal poaching, and global warming. The variety of solutions from the participants included utilising used mobile phones to detect illegal poaching/logging and using drones to monitor natural resources.

The winner of Reboot The Earth Hackhathon 2019, Eshaan Menon (R) with Prem Nair (L), the UNTIL Officer of Information and Communications Technology at the prize giving ceremony.

The winner of Reboot the Earth Malaysia was a solo entrant, Eshaan Menon, who was given the opportunity of a lifetime to pitch his solution at the United Nations Climate Action Summit 2019 in New York City. His solution, entitled SawIt, uses blockchain technology and satellite data to identify palm oil plantation locations intended to monitor illegal activities, deforestation and burning of forests.