DENIC continues its commitment to young professionals in its own region.
Programming together with other young IT enthusiasts and trying out own digital ideas – that's what the event on 16 to 18 June in Frankfurt was all about. Once again DENIC supported the by now sixth Frankfurt edition of the nationwide German youth program "Jugend hackt" with its sponsoring.
As in the past, the joy you can retrieve from finding technical solutions and from programming were in the focus of the event. To ensure that they were well prepared, the 35 teenagers already met a week earlier to get to know each other and, if necessary, to obtain basic programming skills. With the participants thus well equipped and highly motivated, the actual hackathon started on Friday afternoon at the youth center Jugendhaus am Riedberg. First on the agenda were introductory lectures about (digital) activism & network policy, virtual art & culture, the possibility to learn everywhere, there is no planet B, accessibility & health or social media.
Enthusing for IT Technology – Hands-On
Already in the brainstorming sessions that followed, first concrete ideas for specific projects emerged. On day two, the participants thus could immediately begin to implement the projects they had chosen. Compiling layout ideas, defining realistic features, creating a project plan or working with graphics libraries, HTML, Java scripts or an online editor, that was exciting new ground for many of the young potential IT specialists to be. They were competently supported by experts from the praxis. This year, Pawel Kowalik (DENIC's Head of Product Management) and Regina Breuer (Product Owner Infrastructure Services at DENIC) were among the honorary mentors.
Finding Own Solutions
Working in teams and splitting up the tasks, the sub-steps were brought together, tested and, if necessary, improved. The participants can really be proud of what they created, and it certainly exemplifies the initiative's motto "Improve the world with code". On Sunday, the teams showed their impressive results in a final presentation: The project team Culture Guide presented a website that makes available information about different countries, ranging from traditions to recommendations regarding suitable clothing. The team Drawbox had designed a robot that can paint pictures and graphs and that is controlled either manually or via a computer. The Undertune group had developed a discovery website about unknown artists. The user can enter an artist they favour and is introduced to similar but not yet very well-known other artists. (You find all the presentations of this year's results on YouTube (German only).)
Some Come More Than Once
Mathilde (15) already took part last year and came again because she finds it cool and interesting to learn more about the technology that becomes increasingly present in today's life. "Programming together and working to reach a common goal was a very impressive experience for me," says the young student. She highly enjoyed this year's event again. Playing basketball during break times strengthened the team spirit and achieving a goal together had once again been a wonderful experience.
Investment in the Future
DENIC has supported the "Jugend hackt" events in Frankfurt, the location of the Cooperative's head office, since 2018. In addition to the important promotion of young talents, the hackathon offers DENIC as a training company the chance to be noticed by experienced practitioners in the digital sector and those who would like to become one. "Jugend hackt" is an initiative of the non-profit associations Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland and the association for media education – mediale Pfade.
