Last thursday it finally happened: On September 20th, The award ceremony for this year’s European Student Challenge was held and the previously chosen three final contestants were up on stage, waiting to take home their prizes.
After looking back on close to a year full of ideas, concepts, and thorough collaboration between mentors and mentees, a suspense-filled time finally came to a close.
But it wasn’t just the award-ceremony that would take place that thursday – exciting panels involving many interesting speakers, an innovative project regarding autonomous driving and presentations held by the contestants on their winning ideas made sure everyone was involved and exchanging thoughts and opinions on current subjects such as digitalisation and the next generations impact on it.
For a more thorough look into the day’s events, check out our slideshow down below!
At 10 o’clock sharp House of Mentors CEO Martin Weiss officially started off the event with a short speech, welcoming the guests.
Hessens Interior Minister Peter Beuth took the stage and spoke about Hessen, Entrepreneurship and the social market economy.
Afterwards a panel discussion titled „Chances and Issues of digitalisation - Will the next generation turn everything around?“ took place, where new insights were acquired and well-known assumptions were confirmed.
Attendees agreed on digitalisation posing a challenge and being a balancing act for executives to implement it correctly and also include their employees properly.
Andreas Schlicher, Head of division for IT in the HR department, holds the belief this will be a mammooth task in public Administration.
Others reminded of regulation issues and the need of focusing on those.
The drift of human resources towards other countries also proved to be an important point of discussion.
The students’ questions showed several issues with the „Old Economy“.
The audience had many thoughts concerning ways in which parents should be handling digital media when raising kids and its use in education and schooling.
Studiunity founder Julius Planteur took up the role of host during the final contestants’ project presentations.
The presentations offered a thorough overview of the projects the teams had previously turned in for an expert jury to evaluate.
The audience’s questions and feedback were of great use for the teams and clearly greatly appreciated.
Coming in first was team orora.tech with their startup-project dealing with satellites used for Weather-forecast and -research. They were awarded 10.000€.
In second place, winning 7500€ we had Team „Safensor“ with their shock detector.
Finally, in third place Team „The digital nursing home“ took home 2500€ with their concept for digitalizing nursing homes and assisting caregivers.
„The digital nursing home“ won the audience vote in the poll held afterwards and proved to be the attendees’ favourite.
Last but by no means least, to conclude the eventful day, Myestro Interactive GmbH CEO Jens Schick held an interesting presentation about an innovative camera used in autonomous driving.
Photography: Bettina Bamberg
