‘The Teams behind the apps' series: meet Democracy Game
'The teams behind the apps' is a series of videos made by the
EU Datathon [https://data.europa.eu/en/news/op.europa.eu/eudatathon]
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
[https://op.europa.eu/en/web/euopendatadays]. 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 [https://www.linkedin.com/in/dimitragiannaki/],
Konstantinos Kalafatakis
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/konstantinos-kalafatakis-b0b92a9a/],
Dimitrios Lampiris, and Olga Dourou
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/olga-dourou-35032560/] 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
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZbiEd-ltVc]. 

Curious to learn more? Discover all teams and apps via
the EU Datathon website, 
[https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eudatathon]watch their videos on YouTube
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT5rARDev_rnik8jF6E8k5AjN5zeJmqXG],
and follow updates on Twitter, 
[https://twitter.com/EU_opendata]LinkedIn,
[https://www.linkedin.com/company/data-europa-eu] and Facebook, 
[https://www.facebook.com/data.europa.eu]or via our newsletter
[https://data.europa.eu/en/newsletter]. 


Publication Date/Time
2021-11-05T15:00:00+00:00
Explore the virtual debating tool from Greece!