After 48 hours of working the teams, The jury chose The five best. Three of the top five solutions are for children, parents and learning Chatbot Dejana assist parents and teachers in conducting distance learning for children with disabilities. Naucime.online is a platform that helps to master the materials of students, and Stay (in)sane parenting hub helps all parents to better organize time, obligations and fun for children in the days of self-isolation. All parents among you and us will be recognized easily in one of these ideas and solutions! Tilda is a digital donation platform through which help is collected for people in distress such as those who lost their homes in the recent Zagreb earthquake. In exchange for a donation, it offers users a digital call with celebrities. Behind the Name Green community rooftops for a better life hides gardens on rooftops and balconies of residential buildings that contribute to our food self-sustainability, better air quality and quality of life in cities.
These winning ideas are the result of a 48-hour Hackathon against the viral crisis #versusvirus.hr this weekend, which brought together 136 participants in a joint “hacking” of problems caused by the SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 pandemic.
VersusVirus is the first hackathon in Croatia held entirely in the virtual world. Since Friday evening, about fifty hackers and hackers gathered in 15 teams worked on the elaboration of their ideas with the help of about thirty mentors who were at their disposal. The task was to come up with innovative solutions to the problems caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Solutions were sought for a wide range of topics, from rapid responses to crisis, economy, education, arts to community empowerment, environment, governance, health, solidarity. Participants and organizers were constantly in contact through online applications Slack and videoconferencing platforms Zoom where they exchanged ideas, praise, criticism and even arranged the exchange of fresh yeast.
In addition to the help of mentors, the teams also had the opportunity to follow virtual lectures and thus further learn or strengthen the knowledge and skills they already possess – on how to maintain mental strength in times of crisis, on what impact it is and how to create projects with a positive impact, on how to prepare a good story for a video, how to present an idea well, and some surprises in selling or bringing mature ideas to the market.
One of the participants, Martina Anišić, summarized her experience: “For the first time, I participated in the hackathon because I liked the idea of working with talented people from various fields to find innovative solutions to the Covid-19 crisis in just one weekend. This has resulted in people being introduced to different skills and experience, but with the same ambition – to make the most of our abilities and come up with solutions that will concretely help our fellow citizens. I am delighted with this organisation and the mentors who have been with us every step of the way – every honour at this excellent event and I look forward to seeing what impact it will have on our community.”
To fight the viruses and deal with this and any other crisis, because they are all connected, we must be united, solidarity, cooperate and act beyond our established frameworks and that is exactly what happened at the national hackathon VersusVirus, concluded on Sunday evening.
The organizers of this event, who spent hours of volunteer work to make the event go smoothly, are: Impact Hub Zagreb, Technology Park Varaždin, Green Energy Cooperative, Terra Hub, Northwest Croatia Regional Energy Agency, Lean Startup Croatia, Rijeka Development Agency Porin, EIT RIS Climate KIC Hub Croatia, Ivy Digital and EduNorth.
We would like to thank all the participants and mentors and support organisations who will provide further support necessary for the implementation of the ideas, and the next meeting on this topic was agreed already on Tuesday!
For more information on the awarded ideas: https://versusvirus.hr/ or https://versusvirus-croatia.devpost.com/.
