Page - 58 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

equally from the creative industries including the areas of e-commerce, PRmar- keting,filmandanimation, consulting, SAPconsulting and ITconsulting. Students fromThuringian universities and participants from the tourism industry with spe- cialisations in themuseum and logistics sector also took part in the process. The basic data was made available to the teams via the structure of ThüCAT. There were more than 4000 entities with linked data. So that a broader database could be created, a connectionwasmadewith other open data such as geography, weather and traffic data. The jury of experts consisted of representatives of the TMWWDG, the TTG and experienced experts from the fields of tourism, digiti- sation and open data. After all the teams had presented their pitch presentations of the prototypes created at the ThüCAThon, the jury after a long, drawn-out dis- cussion decidedwhich three ideas should be rewardedwith prizes. Oneof themain goalswas to test theThüCATdatabase during its development as a beta version and to develop first applications. This hackathon was a good opportunity to network actors at all levels and to see how quickly the incredibly large potential for innovation can be used through digitisation. The ThüCAThon shouldalsoserveasproof that thestagescreatedup to that timecanbe implemented and used to promote digital tourism in Thuringia. Another goal of this hackathon was to attract potential cooperation partners who work in other areas, such as IT specialists, to enable an evenmore effective implementation of the database. Process of theHackathon Because it is about a completely newdatabase system that is still in its beta phase, the organisers held a community event the evening before the hackathon, inwhich there was an explanation of the technical requirements and their limits. On this evening, therewas also the opportunity to ask questions, to get to knoweachother and to startwith the teambuildingof theparticipants.On thefirst full day after this evening event, the essential part of the work for the participants began and everything went like a “classic” hackathon. First, there was a greeting from the moderator and an introduction and explanation of the format and the procedure. Then the goals of digitisation in tourismwere explained. The starting signal was given at 11 a.m. and the 24-h countdown began. First, everyone was allowed to briefly present their idea. All the ideas were collected on a chatboard and cate- gorised by subject area. More than 20 ideas came up. After the BarCamp phase, each participant and each of the organisers were allowed to vote for their three favourites.As a result, six ideaswere chosen and a corresponding teamwas set up with three to six people each. Then the teams had about an hour to develop the original idea and prepare a short pitch. The individual pitches were followed by feedback and questions that continued to lead to interesting discussions. For example, one team changed its entire concept because the other participants recognised the potential in a detail of the basic idea, which led to a significant change in themain approach. The organisers’mentors supported and accompanied the teams on site to better adapt the ideas and results to the existing strategy. Representatives of Join (the agency that was responsible for the technical imple- mentation of ThüCAT)were available for technical questions or problems.Within 60 N. Richter andD. Dragoeva