How did Coronathon go

Coronathon has concluded last Monday, April 13th! 5 challenges, 5 teams, 5 days - lots of fun and struggle ?? Some things went great right away and the teams have found themselves. At times though, we struggled with streamlining communication - and got Zoom-bombed during the Demo Evening ?? 

I am so excited about the solutions that the teams have developed during this short time. Let me present their work real quick.

Team solutions

Team "Events" has been working on the challenge by Bernd Fritzges - and created a prototype on how to help people meet in real life in follow-up to online conferences and meetups, and book physical locations easily. Anne Laure Zouater and Mohamed Aymane Zizi have worked on the project, under the mentorship of Charlotte Han and Mercedes Rodríguez García. Bernd wrote an article about his experience at Coronathon and Aymane posted on LinkedIn.

Team "Nursing & medical products" has worked on the challenge by Christian Sellink. They proposed a consulting service aimed to solve the problem of certification for new producers of PPE (personal protective equipment, such as masks and hand sanitizers). This will accelerate the certification process and allow producers to enter the market quicker - while ensuring high quality. Christian himself worked on the challenge, supported by Teng Chen and Roman Prytuliak, with mentorship from Katerina Skroumpelou. 

Team "New customers" has worked on the challenge that I sourced from two companies in the chemical industry. Depending on their target customer, chemical companies might be very well off in the Corona crisis (e.g. if they deliver to packaging or pharma) or not so much (if they deliver to automotive). So the challenge was to find customers in new industries to diversify. Nadege Grostabussiat, Raja Aduri, and Johannes Richter have worked under the mentorship of Stefan Ross.

Team "CT data" has built a solution to support hospitals on faster and more reliable diagnostics of Corona infections based on CT and Xray scans, championed by Tim Grylewicz. They have interviewed several doctors to better understand the way of working and now are developing their solution further! Achim Rohn, Weiling Xi, Elizabeth Manikath, Janine Becker, Aymane Zizi, Paolino De Falco, Marcel Ochsendorf, Rollie Jabonero, and Axel Stebner worked under the mentorship of Alex Honchar and Suman Polepaka. You can read about Elizabeth's experience and Alex's impressions on LinkedIn.

Team "Immersive theater" came out of our "Open challenge" initiative, in which Michael Ronen suggested his idea to connect freelancers working on immersive experiences. He's found a team of Farshad Firouzian, Rollie Jabonero, Brijesh Modasara, and Burak Eryilmaz to support him - under the mentorship of Enrique López Ma?as, Mercedes Rodríguez García, and Suman Polepaka! They also plan to keep working on the project together.

Thanks to the orga team, speakers & partners

This time I really understood why team members matter so much. 

Patrick Witzigmann took over the website & hackathon methodology, ensuring that our participants know how to approach challenges and how to build solutions.

Tim Grylewicz did an enormous job organizing promo support from different startup institutions - and served as the champion for the CT data team. 

Roman Prytuliak helped to look for mentors and single-handedly revived the team "Nursing & medical products" ?? 

Stefan Ross joined a bit later - but got up to speed very quickly and mentored the team "New customers" 

Hannes Brellochs supported with his rigorous approach to structuring the event, created the Devpost page and found speakers for our Ignite talks!

On the topic of Ignite talks, thanks to Daniel Barth for his intro to creativity techniques! Mercedes has spoken on chatbots for business, Enrique - on coroutines on Android, Charlotte - about marketing in these difficult times, Anna W?rmer gave an overview on how to pitch, and Irène Kilubi wrapped up with her talk on storytelling (and shared her thoughts afterward).

Our event has received tremendous support from VDVO, Techstars, Digital Hub Cologne, Coronathon Turkey, Munich Startup, Startplatz, SUN – Startup-Netzwerk, Media Lab Bayern, TEG, Bitkom Akademie, Institut für technische Produktentwicklung of Uni Bundeswehr, EU-Startups, Zavora Technologies, Hack Institute, and Retail Hack. Thanks a lot for helping us get our message across and find participants!

In all, I just want to thank the whole team for their input and effort in making this hackathon a success.

What's next? 

During Coronathon, we all came together to work on the cause of helping companies fight the virus. As one of the participants said: 

"I didn't enter for any prize. But when I start something, I want to finish it - especially if it touches people's health" 

This spirit is powerful and vast - and we want to build a community around it. Our hope is to stick together, exchange ideas among Coronathon alumni, and build projects!

We're also planning to publish articles to highlight the experiences of the teams, tell their story, and promote their solutions a bit. Maybe, after reading this, you will want to join too ??? 

See you soon!

Denys