Digital Campus Lyon held its first multi-school hackathon on 2 and 3 May 2018 at the Campus Région du numérique, together with SNCF Digital. The event brought together 105 students: 66 first-year master's students from Digital Campus Lyon, 31 students from the EMLYON Business Mediation programme and 8 developer apprentices from École 101. The challenge was to take part in SNCF's digital transformation and to help spread digital culture internally.

Welcomed by the DC team dressed up as SNCF station masters and stewards, the students quickly climbed aboard, heading for the first interim presentations and pitch preparation… all to the rhythm of SNCF jingles.

A campus buzzing for 48 hours, then, with 200 cans of Red Bull, 70 pizzas, 300 sticky notes, an hour of yoga and hours of brainstorming, for a top-level competition!

To advise and motivate our students, a large team of coaches was on hand throughout this innovation marathon: about a dozen SNCF in-house coaches from several departments, including SNCF Mobilités, with Alexia Graziani, a DC student and SNCF work-study apprentice, and e-SNCF with the digital school, the Digital Operations and Services division, the Digital Transformation Performance division and the 574 Lyon. There were also external coaches: Judith Kreyder, community leader at Startup Weekends, Sylvain Bourrier, founder of Weavup, Pascal Semy, founder of Manager de talents, Damien Armenté, founder of Revealers.co, and Romain Couturier, a graphic facilitator who captured this hackathon in pictures for posterity.
After 48 hours and a series of high-quality pitches, the jury praised the students' creativity and singled out 3 teams: OuiShare (jury's favourite), Ouiskills and Datalent (jury prize). The next day, the winners were welcomed to the #574 Lyon on the 16th floor of the Tour Oxygène, to present their projects once again to SNCF's management, including Dominique Damide, the project sponsor.
An enriching experience for our DC students, who were able to learn from their peers at EMLYON and École 101, and vice versa.