Hackovid is a virtual hackathon that was held from April 6 to 12. It aimed to find solutions to the social problems and needs that citizens have encountered and will meet in the near future as a result of the confinement situation caused by Covid-19.

Hackovid is a virtual hackathon that was held from April 6 to 12. It aimed to find solutions to the social problems and needs that citizens have encountered and will meet in the near future as a result of the confinement situation caused by Covid-19. Among the organizers of Hackovid we find the  Department of Digital Policies and Public Administration of the Government of Catalonia, the I2CAT Foundation and the support of the Digital Future Society.

This event was divided into two important parts:

The first part consisted of defining the challenges, that is, knowing what problems citizens are having. To define the challenges, the hackathon, a week before its start, made a platform available to citizens, within its website, where they could suggest problems for participants to solve during the hackathon. The participation of the citizens was so good that more than 170 different challenges were met. The second part consisted of getting to work and developing a platform that would answer the problem that the participants chose.

Among the challenges suggested by citizens, which you can find here, the most voted were problems such as reactivating local commerce, getting food to families at risk, citizens’ rights to be unconfined, videoconferencing tools for students and teachers, etc. .
Hackovid made a large number of experienced and specialized mentors available to participants in different sectors such as marketing, communication, technology, health, etc. and all the mentors were available to talk to the different groups throughout the hackathon. It is worth mentioning that all communication between participants and mentors was done through the Slack platform.

A jury of experts evaluated the solutions at the end of the hackathon to find which were the most innovative and could attract the most social potential. The top five solutions could win prizes of up to 7,000 euros. In addition, Digital Future Society gave a special prize of 5,000 additional euros to that technological platform that also provided a solution to an issue of risk of social exclusion.

InLaber Gisela Ruzafa  and ex-Laber Sergio Paredes, together with Pau Torrents, Clàudia Vila and Andres Garcia (students of the FIB) participated in Hackovid. Their challenge was to develop a platform that would help teachers teach online. His project was called Didáctica, a web space that makes it easy for teachers to create content to carry out their classes online. To register, it is necessary for the person to be part of a verified institution. To Didactics, you can save and share didactic units of other teachers and also create your own. The result is a URL to share with the students. You can see the link of their project here.

The winners of the hackathon were, in the first place, the platform ajudem.cat, which promotes and facilitates volunteering among citizens, in second position, CoronaTiquets which aims to facilitate the opening of local businesses during the period of confinement and post-confinement to avoid risk of contagion. In third position Codegram, a free service that allows you to make gifts to your friends and family while helping local businesses at the same time. In fourth position is Trick-Troc, an e-commerce platform aimed at promoting and making accessible the online sale and distribution of local commerce products, and with a social purpose. In fifth position EdukiApp, it is based on activities created by the teacher himself, where the video is the protagonist. And, in sixth position, Nebots, a web and telephone service that brings together volunteers with minimal technical knowledge and users who need this knowledge.