Dubbed the 'Defence Makeathon' (the UK spelling of 'defense' is used in this case), the event is organized by the Ministry of Defence and the National Armed Forces in cooperation with Riga Technical University (RTU) Science and Innovation Center.
The makeathon will address five thematic areas: development of unmanned systems, armaments, maintenance of combat equipment, individual equipment systems and components for soldiers, and cybersecurity, along with information and communication technologies.
This makeathon is organised as a team-based event. While individuals are invited to register for the event, all individual makeathon participants will be required to either form a team with other individual participants or join a pre-existing team.
Teams can be composed of students, researchers, experienced innovations, and/or startup representatives and can be citizens of Latvia, NATO member states, EU member states and European Economic Area countries.
Registration for the event should be submitted no later than November 30.
You can find more information in the Makeathon guidelines and you can fill out a registration form at: https://www.eventbrite.fi/e/defence-makeathon-riga-2022-tickets-463561794807.
The RTU Science and Innovation Center will provide premises, raw materials, workstations, special industrial prototyping/production equipment and equipment, in cooperation with partners - the presence of advisors and experts. Authors of the best ideas will compete for prizes, though the exact rewards remain unspecified.
Expected results after the Makeathon will be prototypes or detailed concepts. The final pitching session will be held on 11th of December. All teams will be expected to deliver their pitch presentations. The pitches cannot exceed 5 minutes in length. Only teams with pitches will be evaluated by the jury. After the presentation, a live Q&A session will take place. The duration of Q&A session is 2 minutes in length. Teams that receive the highest amount of evaluation points in one of the three nominations will be announced as the winners.
