#WeStudyTogether - From idea to becoming second in the biggest hackathon in history

Over 20,900 people from across the EU and beyond took part at the #EUvsVirus hackathon last weekend, with over 2,150 solutions submitted in areas including health and life, business continuity, remote working and education, social and political cohesion, digital finance and others. 

We, Miher Ahmad and Jeroen De Koninck, thought it would be a great idea to participate in the hackathon to get feedback and insights around our initial project #WeStudyTogether. We wanted to scale the minimum valuable product…

Little did we know that our project would become second in the remote working and education challenge, making us one of the winners of the EUvsVirus hackathon.

Read here (below) more about the project and how we went from idea to becoming second in the biggest hackathon in history - allowing us to pitch for investors, partners and incubators during the upcoming Matchathon of the European Commission.

Our Solution

Project page - Devpost

Introduction

Out of Crisis comes Opportunity - Europe has currently over 104 million students and pupils unable to attend school due to the Covid-19 situation. This insight made us think: how can we help students to stay connected? What can we do for our local communities? And how can we facilitate those who want to help others, to actually help others. 

While many projects are looking into solving the ‘problems of today’ we wanted to look at solving the issues of tomorrow. Covid-19 or not, education shouldn’t be limited to those who are able to be physically present, those who have more financial resources or those that were lucky enough to be born in a system with more accessible high quality education. Therefore, we should think about the future, a future where education is partly or fully remotely accessible.

There are many platforms enabling students to follow classes one-way but limited in engagement, peer to peer learning and creating a community that is actually similar to the ones we have ‘on-campus’. We wanted to help during the crisis - which we did by creating a minimum valuable product (MVP) that would connect both student and tutor - but moreover we wanted to create a sustainable solution to enhance student engagement by creating a peer to peer learning platform.

#WeStudyTogether - The first MVP

In the beginning of April, we created a first MVP called “#WijBlokkenSamen” or “#WeStudyTogether” for the Dutch speaking part of Belgium. 

#WeStudyTogether is a platform to help students and pupils during times of crisis via matchmaking. In a couple of easy steps you sign up as a volunteer or student/pupil. Next we link volunteers with students/pupils based on their tutoring or study advice needs. In less than two weeks, the platform reached national press, enabling us to have more than 2,000+ visitors, 150+ volunteers and helping more than fifty students in no time. 

We wanted to make an impact and we made it fast.

Expanding our knowledge - Why the #EUvsVirus Hackathon

While having our first MVP live and spending nights matching profiles, we were hitting some first obstacles. The solution we made was not automated and not scalable which meant some people who were in desperate need of help, were currently left behind. After speaking with multiple scholars and entrepreneurs, we decided to look in a more scalable and sustainable way for which we needed input from across our audience market: Europe.

We found the #EUvsVirus Hackathon after reading a post on LinkedIn and decided to enter to get connected with a variety of profiles to accelerate the initial idea we had in the beginning of April. By forming a very international team (Belgian, Spanish, Italian, Turkish and Canadian) we had the chance to incorporate best practices from across multiple nations. 

The Hackathon took a total of forty-eight-hours, starting with an opening ceremony on Friday and a strict deadline on Sunday. The forty-eight-hour passed by at dizzying speed - we needed razor-sharp focus on developing and creating a solution while the clock was ticking:

Friday 24/04 - Evening

? Expanded the team for the hackathon with very talented and diverse members

Ebru - Dr. and Educational researcher at ?zyegin University, higher education, self-regulated learning, creative and productive thinking

Iago - Founder Learning Management System from scratch in early 2000s with 6.000 users, sr. Software Engineer and Digital Architect

Lupo - Business Analyst, user experience visualization and design

? Team brainstorm and blueprint structure for purpose & vision, product, users, community and business plan

? Temporary pitch for Devpost

Saturday 25/04 - Morning

? Found new mentors (after inactivity of our initial mentor)

Katerina - Director Web2Learn & our overall mentor

Anna - Managing Director KBC Start-it & our pitch mentor

Saturday 25/04 - Afternoon/evening

? Visualization landing page and user interface

? Integration of gamification, quality, reward system and incentivization

? Pivot of initial idea to scaled and shared economy solution

? Late-night (read very late night) feedback session

Saturday 25/04 - Sunday 26/04 - Night

? Defining audiences, business model and revenue streams for self-sustaining project

? Take away obstacles around safety, security and language barriers

? Expand incentivization by linking back to employable skills certification

? Reprioritizing and final battle plan for Sunday

? Assessment of technical feasibility / cloud platform model

Sunday 26/04 - Morning

? Incorporated feedback from over night

? Pivoted idea again - made final proposal

? Further deep-dive in feasibility and final draft

Sunday 26/04 - Afternoon/evening

? Submission of the project

? Sleep

Prototype

What’s next for #WeStudyTogether

Now, we very much look forward to the “Matchathon” (a matchmaking where resources will be linked to the solutions that came out of the Hackathon). In this Matchathon which will take place mid-May, we will have the opportunity to present our product to end users such as universities and schools, to investors, corporates and other foundations within the European Union. A golden opportunity to craft our idea in further solution.

If everything goes as planned, we will move from alpha version to beta version within four weeks from now. Next, we will have to partner up with the network of universities to have their buy-in and spread it across their students. We expect to have the platform on the market before the European examination period - when the product will be the most valuable.

This will give us afterwards the summer vacation to incorporate feedback and come up with a final product - that we hope to market by the start of Academic Year 2020 - 2021.

Acknowledgments

As a final note, we want to thank some people. Our hackathon team from across Europe, our two mentors, Anna / Katerina, who were able to coat our project with a layer of gold providing us insights in digital education, improving our pitch and challenging us across the way which ultimately pushed us to higher standards. Thank you.

Lastly, we would like to thank the European Commission, the European Innovation Council and all participating EU member states for organizing a great event, bringing people together for a better world, allowing us to come up with solutions to minimize the impact of the crisis on our society. You have hacked and paved the way for future hackathons.

Thank you,

Jeroen De Koninck and Miher Ahmad

Press Coverage

EUvsVirus Winners (EN) - European Commission

Belgian laureates of EUvsVirus Hackathon (EN) - Lifetech.Brussels

#WeStudyTogether Named Among The World's Best Projects (EN) - ?zegin University

#EUvsVirus Hackathon: Belgium represent in eight of the 117 winning projects (NL) - Department of Economy, Science & Innovation in Flanders

Eight Belgian projects in second round #EuvsVirus Hackathon (NL) - Engineeringnet

Hackathon #EUvsVirus select over 100 innovative solutions (IT) - Regione Toscana 

Spain collaborates on a solution to fight COVID-19 through AI, winner in #EUvsVirus (ES) - eSmartCity

Fast Innovation for the recovery of Europe (IT) - Il Sole 24 Ore

Opportunities against Coronavirus (IT) - Ufficio Regione Toscana a Bruxelles

Webinar A Chat with the Winners at #EUvsVirus (IT) - Hack for Italy

Contact us

If you would like to have a chat or sync over a virtual coffee, do not hesitate to reach out to us. We would love to hear your opinion and feedback - because feedback is a gift.

Project: https://devpost.com/software/westudytogether

Website: https://westudytogether.org

Mail: [email protected]