Coding for a cause
Usually it takes a few months to prepare a hackathon. This time the organizers of #CodeVsCovid19 did it in a few days.
Forces from several industries joined to tackle one problem: Finding solutions to fight the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Over 2’000 coders from all over the world joined the hackathon #CodeVsCovid19 initiatited by HackZurich and with the support of ETH Zurich. And over 200 mentors are supporting the cause with their knowledge.
Usually hackathons happen in a physical space and teams can meet and exchange ideas. This time everyone is working remotely, which is a bit of a challenge. To stay in touch with the teams, we set-up a few livestreams. I joined the team last-minute as a moderator for the expert conversations and team pitches on Youtube.
SATURDAY: EXPERT INTERVIEWS & LIVE PITCHES
On Saturday, March 28, I spoke to Prof. Dr. Sebastian Bonhoeffer of ETH Zurich, Prof. Dr. Roger Kouyos of University of Zurich and Ralph Richter, Innovation Officer Digital Solutions at SAP and former nurse on how data needs to be used and what the challenges are when working with such a vast amount of data. Here’s the link to the conversation:
Melanie Kovacs and me ahead of the first expert livestream on Saturday while keeping social distancing.
Melanie Kovacs, who headed the livestream, also organized live meditation sessions with Jacqueline Keller of Federleicht Coaching and yoga classes. This was a great start into the day!
SUNDAY: EXPERT CONVERSATION & LIVE PITCHES
On Sunday, I hosted another live session with experts and my guests were Prof. Gisbert Schneider of ETH Zurich, Dr. Rachel Salomonsen, President & CEO of Oxford Epidemiology Services, and Sergio Carrillo Wilisch, Medical Device Development at Swiss pharma company Roche. You can watch that session below:
MONDAY: LIVE PITCHING SESSION
And as the pitching sessions by the programers where so interesting and we got a lot of feedback, we decided to open another slot. So, on Monday on the last day of the hackathon we opened another live pitching session. Find out more on what people were working on in the past few hours:
THANK YOU!
A big thank you goes to Silvan Leibacher, who reached out to me to join the team, to Melanie Kovacs for setting everything up so smoothly and to Jonathan Isenring for the overall organization.
And of course to the guests that joined the conversation and contributed last-minute on a weekend!
P.S. My colleague Ana Maria & me mentioned the #codevscovid19 hackathon it our latest Weekend Chat. Also, there’s the next hackathon lined up already: #VersusVirus takes place from April 3-5. More infos on that soon on www.cnnmoney.ch!