As reported by our colleague Dietmar Gattwinkel (thanks a lot!), from the evening of Friday 20/3/2020 to Midnight 22/3/22, Germany organized the WirVsVirus (WeAgainstVirus) hackathon (http://www.wirvsvirushackathon.org).
42968 participants registered for the event, along with 2922 mentors (Disclosure: I was one of them)
Participants worked on 810 Projects organized around 49 themes.
Most popular themes were (with number of projects contributing)
| Question | #Projects |
|---|---|
| How can corona-infected/tested/recovered persons be tracked? | 59 |
| How can we organise neighbourhood assistance through helper platforms? | 58 |
| How can food be provided to all citizens? | 50 |
| How can workers (especially for harvesting) be effectively distributed? | 46 |
| How can we support local businesses and protect them from insolvency? | 45 |
| How can we become creative in times of social distancing? | 42 |
Inspired by a similar event in Estonia, the hackathon was initiated by civil society but got early on co-sponsorship from the German Government. Since Monday, 14 representatives of 7 organizations have been working together remotely, combining their strength and creativity, to implement the #WirVsVirus Hackathon for the German government (under the patronage of the head of the Federal Chancellery, Prof. Dr Helge Braun).
| Organisation | Link |
|---|---|
| Code for Germany | https://www.codefor.de/ |
| Initiative D21 | https://initiatived21.de/ |
| Impact Hub Berlin | https://berlin.impacthub.net/de/ |
| Project together | https://projecttogether.org/ |
| Prototype Fund | https://prototypefund.de/ |
| Social Entrepreneurship Netzwerk Deutschland | https://www.send-ev.de/ |
| Tech4Germany | https://tech.4germany.org/ |
The hackathon is intended as a starting point for an ongoing participatory process to develop collaborative solutions for the challenges posed by COVID-19. Prototypes developed during the Hackathon as well as existing, established initiatives that need support for their next steps are meant to receive help through a digital support program to be developed with the federal government (proposal).
What is notable is not only the sheer amount of voluntary work (coming up to several hundred FTE working for a year), but also that initiative came from civil society.
A machine-translated list of themes and projects is attached. Both can serve as inspiration for areas of work where the Commission/CONNECT can contribute.
Results (video presentation) are accessible in a youtube playlist.
Thanks a lot to our colleague Dietmar for having participated and sharing this important news with us!
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This document has been written originally by our colleague Dietmar Gattwinkel and can be inspirational for other countries and governments.