Team Strassium from Slovenia wins the EU Code Week Hackathon 2021

Publication date: October 15, 2021

Teams from Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Romania and Slovenia competed in the EU Code Week hackathon final on 14 October 2021. They developed outstanding solutions to address everyday-problems and improve the quality of life in their communities.

Watch the final on Facebook or Youtube.

During the spring of 2021, a series of national hackathons have taken place. Over 300 participants had the opportunity to deploy their skills as programmers, and their abilities to think and work as a team, while developing a solution to real-life challenges present in their community, their region and even the world.

As each local edition of the Hackathon moved forward, the teams that advanced to the next stage worked with mentors and coaches to further improve their projects. These mentors were able to see the level of innovation, creativity, and perspective the teams had, where their interests were focused and the diversity in ideas existing among groups.

And by the time they had to present their apps, it was clear that the opportunity for learning and the experience to work with professionals had impacted positively each participant. One team from each country won the chance to get to the Hackathon final, but all participating teams won the experience of a lifetime.

Before the teams had the chance to pitch their solutions, the idea originator of a European hackathon, Member of the European Parliament Monika Hohlmeier congratulated all participants and emphasised that dedication, teamwork and tenancy were present in all of them. “Overall, more than 300 people from Greece, Italy, Ireland, Romania, Latvia and Slovenia came together creating the innovative young spirit that is the EU’s future.”

Then it was time for the jury to evaluate the pitches, the underlying code and the overall impression of the teams during the final. Nora Perseke, Yanis Fares, Thierry Lescrauwaet and Charlotte Creplet (at a distance) brought them a good dose of sense of humour and great advice for the young coders.

The pitch session kicked-off with Techgate from Greece who introduced their Booking system for restaurants, shops, or pharmacies; The Chain-gang, an all-girls team from Ireland, explained their solution to improve communication between community groups -specifically integrate non-profits, charities and the community; Multiskills from Italy presented an online marketplace for local products and producers.

Later on, The Codebreakers from Latvia pitched the creation of a platform for young jobseekers; Cybermoon from Romania told their story about creating a solution to fight online fake news, and finally Strassium from Slovenia presented their solution to reduce food waste, which involved consumers, shops and other stakeholders.

After careful assessment of their pitches the jury decided Strassium from Slovenia was the winner. For the team “it was tough to make a digital solution for fighting food waste because there wasn’t much connection between the industry and the digital world.”

The jury, on the other hand, was unanimously impressed because of the maturity of the project, the potential long-term impact it could have and the way the team managed to involve all stakeholders.

As Thierry concluded, Strassium won because of “the fact of the maturity of the project, how they addressed it, the elements brought into the solution. And if they did it in such short period of time, you see the importance of ideation to then have a perfect execution”.