On 27 and 28 October 2016, the Montpellier web school organised a hackathon with the Midi Libre newspaper.
Over 2 days, web training students in Montpellier were tasked with reimagining the newspaper's digital solutions to appeal to a younger audience (under 30s). Projects had to have a digital dimension, but above all had to be achievable within financial constraints defined by the newspaper's management. The scoring criteria therefore focused on the relevance of the solution and its feasibility.
Throughout the event, a Tweet competition between groups was launched to identify the best Twittos. As a result, anyone could follow the progress of the projects via the hashtag #LibreÀVous.
Following the hackathon, each group presented their project for 10 minutes before a jury made up of the Midi Libre and Digital Campus management teams. The high standard of entries made selecting the winners on the day particularly difficult! It was only a few days later that the team 'Agence Tourisk' was named the overall winner. The project will lead to a concrete development in the coming months. "I am blown away. The level is very high" confided Cyrille MANDOU (campus director), to which Yann MAREC (deputy editor-in-chief responsible for digital development) added: "With them, we can build growth drivers. The hackathon is a fantastic accelerator for ideas. We are very pleased to have been chosen by Digital Campus to support this digital laboratory." Enough, no doubt, to already start thinking about a second edition next year. The winners created an application that accompanies users throughout their day across several key moments (morning, lunchtime, evening). In figures: 90 students, 36 hours non-stop, 20 metres of pizza, 10-minute presentations, 7 teams, 2 Nerf battles.