We were honored to join as Jury members this year’s EU Datathon.
Thus, on 2nd of October 2018 we’ve joined in Brussels the organisers and partners of the competition in order to contribute to the selection of the winner apps in each of the four thematic challenges: ‘EU open data — For more innovation in Europe’, ‘National and EU law — Make legislation interoperable’, ‘EU public procurement — Value for citizens, value for businesses’ & ‘European Food Safety Authority — Fostering data reuse and innovation’.
The competition illustrates the power of open data to stimulate enterprises, start-ups, individuals and other data enthusiasts from all over Europe to find practical solutions to societal problems, as well as to generate jobs and growth.
Preselected among 72 proposals, 16 finalist teams pitched their projects in front of a gathering of app developers, public and private open data specialists and start-up facilitators from many EU countries. Participants had to develop apps using at least one dataset available via the EU Open Data Portal and could combine it with other data sources.
This second EU Datathon had many new features. Contestants could compete in one of four parallel challenges, each with a different topical area, aims and partner organisers. All finalists received a share of 40,000 EUR in prize money, according to their ranking, with the first prize being 5,000 EUR for each of the four challenges.
EU Datathon 2018 was organised by the Publications Office of the European Union together with several partners including the ELI Task Force, the European Food Safety Authority and three directorates-general of the European Commission (Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs; Communications Networks, Content and Technology; and Informatics).