EU Datathon 2022 teams behind the apps: Meet 100 Europeans
Scrollytelling on Europe’s biggest challenges
‘The teams behind the apps’ is a series of videos made by the EU Datathon finalists. Get to know this year’s teams and their apps over 12 episodes, twice per week, in the run-up to the competition finals. On 20 October 2022, the teams will pitch their apps to the jury, who will select the winners. The audience will also have a chance to support their favourite team in the Public Choice Award vote. Register now to follow the finals online!
100 Europeans is an interactive app aiming to raise awareness and spark discussion around the big challenges of our time. How? By breaking them down into relatable, interactive and visual stories in which Europe is a community of just 100 people. The team behind this app – Dimitrios Michailidis and Ntenis Koullolli – joined us for a short interview during 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 are pleased to share that our app is already up and running (though it is, admittedly, a prototype). We have put together two data stories, one covering climate change and the other covering health. You can check them out on 100europeans.org.
We have also developed a data quiz where you can test your knowledge of Europe’s biggest challenges. This helped us confirm our suspicion that people are unaware of most of these issues. It also enabled us to gather important data on what topic we should focus on next.
We want to make the learning experience as seamless and accessible as possible, so our current efforts focus on making the animations smoother and enabling scroll-based narration for our stories. Moreover, we are working on translating the app into different languages; we are aiming to have it available in at least five languages by October.
How did you come up with the idea for this app?
We have a passion for explaining complex socioeconomic phenomena with simple words and visual aids. This usually involves digging deep into public datasets and reports, extracting insights and trying to shape them into educational content.
During this process, we realised that experts have not yet figured out a good way to communicate the most important challenges to the public. Take for example climate change – communication tends to focus on the average temperature increase, a figure that tells us nothing about how our lives will be affected by it.
This is why we came up with 100 Europeans, a concept where Europe is re-imagined as a community of just 100 people. What makes you shift in your seat: knowing that the average temperature is increasing, or that 78 out of those 100 people would be severely affected by climate-related disasters if we don’t tackle climate change?
Why did you decide to take part in the EU Datathon?
We believe 100 Europeans is an amazing idea (no, really). The EU Datathon is a great opportunity to put this belief to the test, by exposing it to a larger audience and getting feedback from experts. We aim for 100 Europeans to be the first-choice website for educational content on big challenges. That requires a lot of resources, and the competition’s funds can help us kick-start this endeavor.
We also found it to be a great opportunity to meet other talented people working on cool data solutions in Europe and to scratch our competitive itch.
To find out more about the 100 Europeans team, watch this 1-minute video.
Curious to learn more? Discover the teams and the apps on the EU Datathon website, watch their videos on YouTube and follow their updates on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn or via our newsletter.