Biodiversity in town and country

Hello, nice to see you again after the long weekend of the Innovation Challenge! First of all, congratulations on winning the special jury prize. How are you after the success and how did you assess your chances?
Veronika Kriz: I was positively surprised but not because I was little convinced of our contribution, but because all the ideas were so good.

Which professional or study background do you have?
Marie Rathmayer: Industrial engineering in Munich. Sustainable business is also the driving force for me in my studies.

Fabio Maienschein: Business Informatics in Karlsruhe.

Anne Lewerentz: I am a PhD student in Ecosystem Modeling at the University of Würzburg and work on the topic of biodiversity in Bavaria.

Veronika Kriz: I am currently doing my Master in Digital Marketing in Ansbach. On the side, I am working in video and film production.

You started the challenge with the goal of contributing to the visibility of biodiversity. Why did this topic appeal to you?
Marie Rathmayer: I live in the country myself and therefore it is important to me to know myself with what surrounds me. I simply want to learn more. Sustainability and environmental protection are extremely important to me, which is why I also put my studies in this direction.

Fabio Maienschein: I chose the topic quite specifically because it was very openly posed and not too technical. For me as a person with an affinity for technology, biodiversity offers great potential for technical solutions. In this topic, I was able to develop very creatively.

Anne Lewerentz: For me, it is very exciting to see how one can communicate the important role of biodiversity for our society. Biodiversity is not particularly present in the media at the moment, but in the long term it is one of the most important issues of our time. I immediately found myself in the challenge and found it very exciting to work on it in this way with new people.

Veronika Kriz: Reason 1 - The other topics were too technical for me. I can't program, that's why the topic with the question appealed to me right away. And reason 2 - I feel it is hugely important to know what is happening in my own tangible environment. Since I have spent more time this year in the allotment garden of my parents, the topic has somehow ignited in me and I noticed how much joy it brings me.

In the end, the concept for an app has emerged, which should animate young and old to playfully deal with nature on their own doorstep. SAVEDiversity, I personally find the name very appropriate. The app is intended to be an interactive scrapbook for species that are on the red list. How did you come up with the concept for SAVEDiversity in just one weekend? You could not meet you coronabedingt yes
Marie Rathmayer: Of course purely online, which has also worked pretty well. We have coordinated over the weekend again and again and assigned each other tasks. We have exclusively used online tools for communication and planning.

Fabio Maienschein: We simply had a good structure. We first openly exchanged thoughts and structured them with the help of task boards. It would not have been possible otherwise. This even allowed us to take small breaks between the milestones of our project. We were able to set up initial concepts well with the appropriate visualization tools. Thanks to Veronika, we also got started quickly. It was a good boost for us to see the individual steps well visualized.

Veronika Kriz: I would actually have liked to have had much more time to deal with the visualization. But even so, we very quickly found our way together and harmoniously settled into our own roles. The most important prerequisite, however, was our motivation, which was good for the cause and the implementation.

Anne Lewerentz: After six months of Corona, online collaboration has also already become a common thing. In my environment, anyway. It always surprises me how flexible we humans can be after all. Beyond that we had however also simply very large luck with the team composition.

We can confirm that you were a very harmonious and industrious team. With what term would you summarize the weekend?
Anne Lewerentz: We were all hackathon newbies, which has also connected us. An adjective that kept coming up: exhausting. But it was a lot of fun in the first place, even if we didn't sleep much during those two nights! But the positive energy that weekend made up for all the effort.

Is there a funny anecdote about the weekend?
Fabio Maienschein: Does it count that we almost didn't submit the video in time to the jury scoring? ( Editor's note: all interviewees laugh.)

If you ask me as one of your coaches, I do not know if that was funny or rather exciting. But it all went well! Will you stick with the idea?
All interviewees: Absolutely! Check out www.savediversity.de if you want to stay up to date.

The interview was conducted by Christian Metz, head of the ZD.B topic platform Digital Land Management at Bayern Innovativ GmbH.