From 24 to 26 April 2020, the European Commission organised the EUvsVirus hackathon to tackle challenges related to the COVID-19 sanitary crisis. With over 20.000 participants, it came out as the biggest Pan-European hackathon ever organised… and Euronovia was involved!
What is the The EUvsVirus hackaton?
The Pan-European hackathon EUvsVirus took place from the 24th to 26th of April 2020. The objective of this 48 hour-long challenge: developing innovative projects to overcome the effects of the COVID-19 sanitation crisis in Europe. The European Commission led the hackathon under the patronage of Mariya Gabriel, EU Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth.
The EC had identified 37 challenges into 6 domains:
- Health & Life,
- Business Continuity,
- Social & Political Cohesion,
- Remote Working & Education,
- Digital Finance
- Other
The participants had to form teams of about up to 7 people to submit a project corresponding to one of the 37 challenges. All teams were supervised by a team coordinator and a mentor. In the end, over 20.000 participants have been virtually united for the same cause and proposed more than 2.100 solutions!
Euronovia as challenge leader for Business continuity
Euronovia intervened as challenge leader of the challenge #c15 Business continuity – other. In this position, we instructed the overall team leader and mentor coordinator assigned to this challenge by giving them advice on how to support the teams in the advancement of their projects.
The teams were asked to develop projects responding to current difficulties which are faced by businesses in general and especially by start-ups and SMEs. The challenge aimed at creating new effective business models, which are resilient and which maintain the competitiveness in order to secure jobs and to keep people working. In the end, 21 projects were submitted in this challenge.
Results and next steps
The award ceremony took place on 30th April 2020. In the end, 5 overall domain winners and 37 challenge winners were honoured. Challenge winner of #c15 Business continuity – other is the “Safe Access” project, presented by a French team. The project aims at enabling effective deconfinement thanks to a touchless access device which can be installed at the entry of offices.
All winners are invited to the online event “Matchathon”, which will take place from the 22nd to the 25th of May 2020. This is the next step to be taken to turn the outstanding ideas into reality towards deployment. It will bring the teams in touch with end-users and provide access to investors. Also, a EIC COVID Platform will be launched at the end of May to foster connections between the winners and the corresponding institutions which could apply the innovative solutions.