First Digital Tech Summit: A 3-Day Tech Adventure
By Julian Weishaupt
In our mission to “make entrepreneurship happen” ZOLLHOF connects all kinds of people with an interest in tech, innovation and entrepreneurship to create an ecosystem in which we can help startups to thrive and grow. In order to achieve this, a part of what we do is to regularly organize events.
This year, ZOLLHOF hosted its very first Digital Tech Summit, a mix between tech summit and hackathon, together with our partners NÜRNBERGER Versicherung, Schaeffler, Siemens Healthineers, adidas and GfK.
Over 200 hackers and 300 visitors took part at the 3-day tech adventure at the Lederer Kulturbrauerei in Nuremberg. As we wanted to make sure that everyone finds a topic she or he is passionate about there were no less than 10 different challenges for the hackers ranging from topics like mobility, security and retail to health and sports.
How important events like this have become in times of digital transformation becomes obvious when looking at the guests who were visiting the Tech Summit. We were very happy to welcome Prof. Dieter Kempf — Chairman and President of BDI, Franz Josef Pschierer — Bavarian Minister of Economics and Prof. Dr. Hornegger — President of Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg along with a lot of other great guests.
While the hackers were working on their challenges and prototypes, the visitors had the chance to enjoy some insightful panel talks, moderated by our host Amiaz Habtu, who is also known from startup show “Die Höhle der Löwen”, and our amazing speakers. For a full list of speakers please see https://www.gotechsummit.com.
By the time all panel talks were over, the hackers were already hacking for about 48 hours and it got serious for them. 23 teams had to pitch in the half-finals, where only the 12 best got their ticket into the grand final. It was an exciting and close battle between the teams, but in the end the jury had to pick 5 winners out of the amazing 12 finalists. Here are the 5 best teams of the Digital Tech Summit:
5. Scooter Do 📃
Scooter Do saves you 30 minutes of sleep every day with the Schaeffler eBoard integrated in a campus sharing model.
4. Find me a human 📃
Humans are much more focused on voice, than on content. So “Find me a human” built an Alexa-Skill, you can rate a product with only using your voice and also be able to listen to real-voice ratings.
3. Aka Fit 🥉
Our italian team Aka Fit built a smart sleeve tracker which automatically analyses the data for the doctor as well as for the patient.
2. All cammed-up 🥈
All cammed-up developed a SaaS security camera, which functions as a smart door guard.
1. PreTrack 🥇
PreTrack enables transparent monitoring of packages on their entire way to the customer and detects all kind of motions and damage.
After the “work part” was over and all the pressure was gone, it was time for the “fun part” as the teams really deserved a nice after show party. That’s why we finished the tech adventure with free drinks and some nice music by DJ Bird Berlin.
To sum it up, the Digital Tech Summit 2018 was a great success where people with a digital mindset and passion for innovation got to connect to make their ideas happen. One participant said: “I think it is one of the best places on earth to have good ideas.” We couldn’t agree more with that.
Maybe there is even one of the teams turning their hackathon idea into an actual business case! If you don’t want to miss what exactly they are doing and get all the latest ZOLLHOF & startup news, subscribe to our newsletter here.
Julian works in Social Media and Marketing for ZOLLHOF and studies economics at FAU. Julian is also passionate about working out and his — or how we like to believe our — dog Luna.
