Hackathon #WirVsVirus takes on the battle against Corona

The Hackathon "WirVsVirus", organized by the German government, broke all records this weekend. More than 27.000 participants took part - including ERGO employees.

ERGO employee Jeroen Minnebo actively participated in the hackathon against Coronavirus.

It was the biggest hackathon ever. More than 27,000 people wanted to be there to develop digital and analogue solutions to the challenges caused by the coronavirus crisis. The German government invited people to take part at the weekend.

Biggest hackathon in history

Jeroen Minnebo was one of the participants who logged on to the computer at home. The employee from the ERGO Online Communications Team was amazed that so many people had registered. "That certainly surprised the organisers," he says. The participants had generated over 1.500 project ideas and challenges. Among them were very different problems: From supporting risk groups to preventing fake news to faster information about Corona.

Susanne Terhoeven also took part. For the ITERGO employee, it was her first hackathon ever. She worked on a home office cockpit for employers. "I was personally very interested in the topic," says Susanne Terhoeven. "I'm now at home all day and notice how different working at home is."

An app to protect against Corona

Jeroen decided to develop an app together with about 60 other participants to prevent contact between healthy people and people infected with Corona. For this purpose, contact persons of infected people should be automatically identified so that they can voluntarily place themselves in quarantine. The anonymised movement profile and the health status of the users will enable risk areas to be displayed.

"It was really great to work with people who have very different skills and who were able to contribute them to the project," says Jeroen, who found the teamwork very constructive. In addition to IT specialists and programmers, the team also included doctors, lawyers and marketing experts. Communication and teamwork ran via dedicated tools.

Digital collaboration very effective

Together, Jeroen and his team developed the "CoronaTracker" over the weekend. Social media campaigns, influencers and guerrilla marketing are intended to make the app well-known. A corresponding pitch video on YouTube will now show the jury and the mentors the advantages of the app. In the course of the week, it will be decided which projects will win and be promoted.

The digital collaboration in the hackathon has fascinated Susanne Terhoeven very much. "You have a team tool, you organize yourself differently, and you come up with a solution in a much more agile way - together with a team, that you didn't know existed before". This was a completely different kind of work from what she was used to. "Everyone was absolutely passionate about it," says Susanne Terhoeven. "And all in all, a huge pool of ideas came out of it - that's very impressive."

Will we get out of this crisis digitally?

For Jeroen, the hackathon is already a success: "The project shows that many people can accomplish great things in a short time via digital channels. Within 48 hours an app was developed. "And also the federal government has put such a big event together in such a short time", says Jeroen. That shows: The digital ways can help us in this crisis. 

From Benjamin Esche