The hackathon Protathon Baltic 2020 sponsored and part-organized by Connect2SmallPorts finished yesterday with all 12 team presentations as well as awarding of the best ideas developed within less than 48 hours.
In this year, the Portathon was organized on a virtual platform, involving over 80 participants from Lithuania, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and United Arab Emirates. The event was dedicated to young academics, representatives of different industries as well as specialists from various fields to create innovative solutions for proposed challenges of the Baltic Sea Region. Competition, which is significantly affected by the high concentration of ports, accelerating digitalisation processes, is gaining momentum to find new forms by unlocking the potential for innovation and discovering talent capable of assessing the challenges facing business from a different perspective. The public voice is also becoming increasingly important, so ecological and social aspects have also been particularly relevant in shaping the challenges of Portathon Baltic 2020. This year, there were eight of them, including digitization in the logistics sector, automated port equipment, digitization of port terminals, directions of intelligent transport ecosystems and cyber security in the maritime sector
The teams were assisted in the 48-hour race by 14 mentors from Vilnius, Klaipeda University, Vilnius Tech, the Center for Physical and Technological Sciences and other institutions, experts from Poland, as well as the Swedish Blue Science Park and Blekinge University of Technology. Participants were also advised by representatives of business organizations – Schneider Electric, Omega Technology.
A video of the Opening Speech by Lithuanian EU Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius can be rewatched below. The Opening Session as well as Final Pitches and Awards were streamed via Facebook, the recordings can be reviewed here.
