Civil society team – European Union vs Virus

The EUvsVirus hackathon took place online on April 24-26 2020. About 20,900 people took part in the event.

Origins
On April 1, Fabio Balli was invited to join the organizing team as Swiss curator. Another person was also invited as curator but did not follow up.

After a few day, Fabio took the new position of project manager Civil Society – one of the nine project groups organizing the event.

On April 8, he presented to daily stand up meeting a proposal to ensure all participants – back then 60000 expected – would collaborate to build a minimal number of projects, building on the Emerging Change model. The proposal was rejected. Not being able to ensure cooperation accross teams in a top-down way, Fabio then decided to mobilize a team of ambassadors that would help participants collaborate with local civil society organizations.

People
48 people joined the Civil Society team as ambassadors representing either a country (up to three people per country), or a vulnerable population.

From the team created, Emmanuel Kellner became PM associate, Martin Burr became PM Program & Live Content, and Petra Arends-Paltzer became Swiss curator. Link to Swiss authorities was made through Peter Broennimann from SEFRI.

Three public figures where also invited to give an input in the form of a video


 * Dr Didier Pittet, director of the infection control programme at the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Patient Safety
 * Pierre-Yves Maillard, National Councillor, President of the Swiss Trade Unions, former head of Department of Health at Canton Vaud
 * Dr Martina Hirayama, State Secretary for Education, Research and Innovation

Cooperation
The Civil Society team used different tools to organize. Most tools used for the event were proprietary, despite advocacy to use libre and open-source tools, as recommended by the European Parliament.


 * Slack – asynchronous discussion channel
 * Miro – whiteboard to give information about the project
 * Zoom – video conferencing
 * Google – general documentation
 * AirTable – data basis

Outcomes
The main outcomes of the Civil Society team were:


 * a list of 860 civil society organisations across Europe
 * a guide to help the 20’900 participants reflect on their goals, diversity, work with practitioners, have social impact

Various communications were made about the process, including a blog listing the Swiss projects awarded, or a presentation to the GDHub. The initial proposal for all participants to cooperate became the project Global crises, democratic solutions—within days.