Climate change is the greatest threat of the XXI century, and we have the challenge of taking action to stop it. The European Union is pioneering the movement, and it is taking measures against it. A clear sign of this are the European Recovery Funds, launched in 2020, with the goal of healing from the COVID-19 crisis. Spain will receive up to 140.000 million euros for the next 5 years. These funds will be distributed across all industries in our society, and they have two main components common to all verticals: green transformation and digital transformation. We are in front of a unique business opportunity in history.

In addition, during this last decade Cisco has pushed towards sustainability at all levels: circular economy, energetic efficiency, carbon neutrality, etc. During the last two years Cisco has made even a bigger bet towards sustainability, introducing a new concept: Green & Blue (G&B). G&B is a solid strategy that combines sustainability (Green) with digital (Blue). Its main goal is to help customers achieve a digital and sustainable future.

The combination of this business opportunity, together with Cisco’s sustainability strategy, drove Cisco Spain to launch the #GreenAndBlueHackathon. With a market volume of more than 15.000 million euros, this event has as the goal of looking for technological solutions that contribute to a sustainable future and that are able capture part of the European Funds. And in order to do so, we are launching five different categories: “Sustainable, secure and connected mobility”, “Automatized, intelligent, secure and digital infrastructures”, “Green and intelligent buildings”, “Preservation of natural resources”, “Sustainable tourism”.

Opening: on March 2nd, 2022 we will celebrate the launch of the Hackathon. The participants will be able to go to Madrid’s or Barcelona’s offices, or to join virtually from anywhere.

Closure: on March 30th, 2022 we will have a closing ceremony in which the participants will present their proposals. We will announce the winners and give them the corresponding prices.

Hackathon: the development of the solution will take place during March. In this period, the participants will have premium access to multiple resources: talks about sustainability as a business, inspirational talks about from key professionals in the industry, workshops about development of new ideas, and much more.

Teams: it is important to note that the participating teams will be composed by a maximum of 3 people. In terms of the necessary requirements, we ask the participants to have experience with Cisco technologies, as well previous knowledge on programming and APIs. The profiles from the people may be as diverse as possible. In fact, the more diverse the team is, the more complete the idea will be.

Commitment: with the goal of reducing the workload as much as possible, we have extended the Hackathon duration to one month since the start date. With this measure we want to minimize the impact in the daily work of the participants, but keeping the opportunity to get the best ideas out of the Hackathon.

Mentors: each team will have access to a mentor from Cisco. In such way, the participants will be able to ask any kind of technical questions, as well as additional advice from a business and sales perspective. It is a unique opportunity to network with Cisco employees with different backgrounds.