The organization of such a joint event offers a good start for cooperation between university and business. The collaboration with Deutsche Telekom's Customer Experience & Data team is a good example of this, with an interesting specialist area of a DAX company.
The aim of the hackathon is not to develop a finished product, but to generate an idea or a concept. "Hackathons are a great format for working creatively in small interdisciplinary teams in a short space of time on questions and challenges from practice and on useful solutions on site. We want to create opportunities for students and young scientists to be directly involved in the development of innovations," says Sandra Speer, Head of the Transfer Center enaCom. Every year, the Transfer Center enaCom organizes a series of hackathons on a wide range of specialist topics and issues and with various partners, such as the recent Cybersecurity Hackathon and the Sustainability Hackathon.
At #Hack4BestCX, students and researchers supported by data scientists from Deutsche Telekom work on a specific challenge in a team within one day based on operating and performance data. The aim is to develop prediction models that can detect errors and deviations in network performance as accurately as possible. Deutsche Telekom can use predictive maintenance models to check the status of the various network components and detect faults at an early stage. To do this, many sensors within the network infrastructure generate huge amounts of data. By using artificial intelligence, for example, a certain threshold value is set at which the system sounds an alarm. The company can then react quickly to the problems and intervene via remote maintenance or on site.
Fresh ideas and networking
"We are of course always on the lookout for fresh ideas and new methods for the further development of our (error) prediction models and therefore find it exciting to see how the excellently trained students and young scientists from Bonn deal with our real-life questions and data. Not least in order to constantly improve the customer experience for our customers," says Benno Willoweit, Chapter Lead Data Scientists in the Customer Experience & Data department at Deutsche Telekom. "As a large company, it is also interesting for us to network personally with young data scientists and computer scientists at an event like this."
enaCom Innovation Scout Dr. Daniela Treutlein also highlights this opportunity for students to take a look behind the scenes at companies from the region such as Deutsche Telekom as an example of successful transfer. "At the same time, team-building in an inspiring external environment is perhaps also the beginning of working on further questions with the Telekom Data Scientists or creating ideas for your own start-up with your team mates - in which case we are of course on hand as a point of contact."