‘The Teams behind the apps' series: meet Democracy Game
Explore the virtual debating tool from Greece!
'The teams behind the apps' is a series of videos made by the EU Datathon finalists. Get to know the people and their proposals for apps over nine episodes, once a week, in a run-up to the EU Open Data Days. During this online event in November, the teams will pitch their apps to the jury who will select the winners in the competition finals.
In this eighth episode you get to meet ‘Democracy Game’. The team is competing with two other teams in challenge 3: ‘A Europe fit for the digital age’.
With the purpose of engaging citizens in politics, this Greece- based application will host virtual debates, competitions, and polls like a social networking app. You will be able to create virtual clubs, enter a virtual “townhall”, discover EU datasets, express your arguments, record your performance, and connect with peers. The app will allow you to draft policies on various real-life topics in local and national government. The goal of the game is to encourage young people to speak up, inspire them to think critically, fight fake news, and be part of the decision-making processes of politics.
Dimitra Giannaki, Konstantinos Kalafatakis, Dimitrios Lampiris, and Olga Dourou form the team behind Democracy Game, and they joined us for an interview in which we talked about the app, the idea that led to its creation, and why they decided to participate in the EU Datathon.
How are you doing with the app? What’s the status?
We paid great attention to finding the right partners to develop our app. This was very important to us for two reasons: first, we wanted to find partners that share the same values that arise from our European democracy and second, we didn’t have a tech specialist in our team. So, today, we are happy to collaborate with young people from Greece (front and back-end developer and data scientists) who share the same vision as us and to be building an MVP [minimum viable product] that will highlight some of the important elements of our idea such as well-informed decisions and active participation in political life.
Who is your app for?
Our target audience is mainly young people aged from 16 to 24 years old who were born in the digital era. Through our app we aim to help them overcome the social and financial obstacles that deter them from pursuing an active role in political life.
Why did you decide to take part in the EU Datathon?
We wanted to have the opportunity to speak for our idea and our vision at the heart of Europe. Just applying to the EU Datathon competition was an amazing experience since we had to work hard in order to express what we had in mind in a short text. In addition, it gave us the opportunity to explore different EU data and familiarise ourselves with open data in general. What’s more, being shortlisted as a finalist gave us the motivation to search for the right partners and work jointly within a specific timeline to deliver our MVP given our resources (people, time, money). Οn our way to the finals, we worked in order to (among other things) receive valuable feedback and a boost to further develop our idea and start helping the first young people within a reasonable time.
To find out more about Democracy Game, watch their 1-minute video.
Curious to learn more? Discover all teams and apps via the EU Datathon website, watch their videos on YouTube, and follow updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, or via our newsletter.