What a (Demo) Day!

On Monday, March 3rd, there was another Demo Day: Around 110 participants came to the last Demo Day for this funding cycle and were presented with the results of the projects of the 16th round of Prototype Fund and how they got there.

This time, the event kicked off with a keynote speech by Jonas Bostelmann, who reported on the current status of open geodata in public administration and the benefits of AI. He also emphasized the urgency of public administrations cooperating with each other instead of each doing their own separate work. His concept of infrastructure as the social and technical foundation of our society, which needs to be shaped and maintained together, was definitely influential for the following day.
The other talks took us from plans to travel across Europe, to the 3D reconstruction of video contexts, via linked open queer data and traffic signs as data (treasure), to the visualization of geodata: What a ride! In between, there was of course also the opportunity to test a wide range of software hands-on: among other things, sound improvements to podcasts could be heard, tickets for train journeys printed, one could train for humanitarian missions and coordinate paramedics at an event. There was also plenty of time for discussion with the funding recipients and the audience, which, accompanied by catering of course, is a key part of any Demo Day. The day was framed by content panels, which this time dealt with open source as a tool against market power, as a protective shield for one’s own privacy and as a tool for mapping and creating spaces.

And we are even more pleased to announce that this was not the last Demo Day: after 16 rounds, we will be celebrating eight years of the Prototype Fund at the end of March, before class 01 of our newly launched funding program starts in June – and the next Demo Day is likely to take place at the beginning of December. If you are as excited as we are, follow us on Mastodon!

As always, we would like to thank our team at the DLR-PT and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research for the trustful cooperation. Thanks to bUm for the great location and to Dinette for the delicious catering. And of course, we would like to thank all the projects from round 16 that we were able to support along the way – it was great working with you!