The Digital Hackathon, 2023 edition, was as eventful as it was insightful. Two days dedicated to helping participants enrolled in the #RBS4Entrepreneurship program in creating a digital mockup or MVP of their startup idea, covering topics such as UX/UI and App prototyping.
On Day One we kicked things off with the Masterclass on How to Build an MVP held by Diego Banovaz, Chief of Product &Technology at EPICODE, where participants went through the foundational elements from planning to execution, to build a successful digital product, the mistakes not to make and what are the useful tools and approaches to build the first mock-up.
The day then continued with three different workshops:
The remaining part of Day One and the entirety of Day Two were instead dedicated to one-to-one mentorship where teams met their mentors, Vittorio Simoni, Paul Levitsky, Akbar Rahimov, Alex Spomer, Sandro Ierna, and engaged in one-to-one sessions to address their specific project questions from a tech perspective.
The Digital Hackathon event allowed participants to improve their knowledge and project management in order to produce a mockup of their idea and learn about how to interact with developers and to communicate their needs and vision.
Antonio Ragusa, MBA – LLM, Dean of Rome Business School stated: “The digital hackathon was an incredible success and the level of digital results was very good overall. We saw well-structured mockups of websites, apps and ecommerce websites, a testament to the success of our RBS4Entrepreneurship project.”
At the end of the two days the evaluating committee took some time to declare the winning project. After careful evaluation, the award for quality and effort during the two-day Hackathon was given to startup “The Design Shop”, a full-cycle design agency that broadcasts its business through an online platform. It offers branding and concept design, web design and UX/UI, application development, content management, and video and photography services.
The team, composed of Alina Golovan, student in the Master of Arts and Culture Management at Rome Business School and her colleague Oksana Kushnir has won the Hackathon trophy and will directly access the next Selection Day, on February 17, 2023. Their project will be among the 14 projects that will present their business ideas in front of the #RBS4Entreprenurship Committee.
The winners wanted to give special thanks to their mentor Paul Levitsky
“We are deeply grateful to our mentor! Paul helped us solve thorny issues, gave us clear feedback on all our features and the overall structure of the product. He provided us with a roadmap and advice on what we actually needed to build our product on the web. His responsiveness and commitment have been incredible.”
Thanks to the Digital Hackathon, the Design Shop team was able to take an important step towards the creation of their final product and as the team stated “get valuable information from the speakers that definitely saved us from mistakes and problems we might face in the future.”
For those who didn’t make the cut for the Digital Hackathon and anyone else interested in launching their startup, the work continues: the next opportunity will be on the Selection Day, which is rapidly approaching. Get ready to face the jury and pitch your idea to the best of your ability, in order to win a spot in the incubation program of Rome Business School!
