What is the Hackacamp ?
The Hackacamp is 2 days of competition in teams made up of students and professionals, working to find a digital solution to a given challenge. The 1st-year students of the Master's in Digital Strategy Expertise at Digital Campus Bordeaux, paired with freelancers from Digital Village (known as the Villagers), had exactly 30 hours to come up with an innovative concept in response to the brief set by French Tech Bordeaux.For this 1st edition, the jury of the final presentation on July 7th was made up of professionals from the Bordeaux digital ecosystem:
- Xavier Lainé, Director of French Tech Bordeaux
- Eva Garraud, France Development Director at Digital Campus
- Bertrand Moine, Co-Founder of Digital Village Adrien Pinson, Co-Founder of YESCAPA (formerly jelouemoncampingcar)
- Albert Proust, Founder of Gablys Lyessine Djeradi, founder of The fit Makers, representative of 1Kubator.
How did this Hackacamp unfold?
WEDNESDAY
9 a.m. - Official opening of the Hackacamp, objectives of the event, presentation of the various partners and announcement of the programme. This was followed by the presentation of the brief by Gautier Bories and Paul-Antoine Evain, French Tech representatives, over the traditional DC breakfast. In short, the calm before the storm.
On the agenda, the following theme : “ Find a digital solution to foster exchanges between entrepreneurs from the Aquitaine region (French Tech) and foreign entrepreneurs (French Tech Network) ”
10 a.m. – Time for brainstorming. After familiarising themselves with the brief, the students and Villagers (the 8 participants from Digital Village) were treated to a giant brainstorming session based on the “ World Café ” method, led by the student coaches of this hackathon (Arthur Louge and Marie Dupuy – 2nd-year Master's, Tom Pujol and Johan Joachim – 3rd-year Bachelor). The goal was to exchange everyone's ideas through several speed brainstorming rounds. Many ideas emerged from this workshop. The students then held a vote to define the 6 angles of the brief they would work on.
Angle 1 : French Tech social network / C2C communication
Angle 2 : Co-living/Co-working housing
Angle 3 : French Tech Pro / Students / School matching B2C
Angle 4 : Woofing and Monetisation
Angle 5 : Gamification
Angle 6 : Web TV / Media / Communication
11 a.m. – Forming the teams. With the angles of the brief validated, the Villagers first chose the theme they wanted to work on, and were then joined by 7 to 8 Digital Campus students.
11:15 a.m. – Kick-off. Over these 2 days, the students were able to question experts from Digital Village, be advised and challenged by their coaches from DC, DV and French Tech, drink unlimited coffee, question themselves, start over, drink more coffee, devour dozens of buttery pastries, but also test and refine their concept during interim presentations. Pitching as in a real-life situation—that was THE 1st dreaded exercise…
5 p.m. – 1st interim pitch of 3 minutes. The ground began to shake to the rhythm of the pulse rates of the most stressed among them. Fortunately, the Digital Campus teaching teams and the professional teams from Digital Village and French Tech offered good advice to prepare them as best as possible and refocus some projects.
THURSDAY
11 a.m. – 2nd interim pitch of 2 minutes. Final preparations before the final presentations. The games have begun !
3 p.m. – Final presentations - 5 minutes of pitch, 5 minutes of questions from the jury. After 2 days of relentless work, 40 litres of coffee consumed and a great deal of thinking and action, the long-awaited time for the final presentations finally arrived. The 6 teams took turns before the jury and a packed room. At the end, the jury withdrew to deliberate. A difficult deliberation for the 6 jury members, as the quality of the deliverables and the relevance of the proposals were so high.