Some of the challenges proposed in the IX HackForGood, the event organised by Telefónica Chairs throughout Spain and hosted by UCAM in the Region of Murcia, include: promoting sustainable tourist destinations, finding solutions to the undesired loneliness of the elderly, improving mobility on university campuses and making use of left-over materials from construction and refurbishment work. Multidisciplinary teams of students have to combine business ideas with technological measures to offer a solution to the challenge they chose. 

UCAM HiTech, born with the idea of turning science-based projects into business ideas with a social impact, was the ideal setting to host this hackathon, which takes place today and tomorrow. José Manuel Grau, Regional Director of Telefónica in the Region of Murcia, encouraged the students to submit a good project, as ‘this is a fantastic opportunity to develop your talent and see how you can combine it with other people, helping you to come up with a business idea’.

Along these lines, Carlos Vicente Caballero, HiTech's Director, outlined the key points of this initiative: ‘The aim is to bring together young talent, entrepreneurial culture and projects that can have an impact on society’. In HackForGood, students are divided into teams formed by students from different fields, so that each one brings the value of his or her field to the concept they work on. Later, as Pau Guardiola, UCAM Director of User Experience and Multimedia, recalled, ‘they will be assessed on the presentation, technical usefulness, economic viability and development value of each proposal. This is a matter of translating innovation into practice, which is exactly how students learn the most’.

For Irene Ruiz, student of the UCAM Bachelor's Degree in Marketing and Commercial Management, one of the most interesting parts of this challenge lies precisely in the group creation and the combination of talent: ‘Several worlds come together, people from communication, engineering or the commercial sector and that is what companies are looking for. Learning how someone more technical communicates with someone more business-oriented is one of the strong features of this event’.

About #HackForGood

HackForGood is an event that brings together more than a thousand students from 25 Spanish universities, including UCAM, to work collaboratively in the development of technology solutions with a social purpose. The event awards more than €50,000 in prizes. There are three levels of competition: local (winners at each venue), national (national winners) and a final one, held months later, in which the three national winning teams and the first winning team from each venue or city compete.