On April 2–3, at the Don-Plaza Congress Hotel, intellectual competitions in the field of media were held among students in grades 9–10 of the Southern Federal District and North Caucasian Federal District. The hackathon was organized by the Specialized Educational Scientific Center of the Southern Federal District and the Southern Federal University as part of the implementation of the National Project “Science and Universities”.

The goal of the Media Hackathon of the SUSC Southern Federal District is to integrate schoolchildren into solving socially significant and business problems, using social and humanitarian knowledge, to help children immerse themselves in project activities and improve their soft-skills in the digital field.

Before the start of the hackathon, the scientific director of the SUSC Southern Federal District, President of the Southern Federal University Marina Borovskaya addressed the participants :

“Here you take your first steps into the professional community. Try to be demanding of yourself. You can extract useful information from each case.”

Timur Sinelnikov , director of the Scientific Research Center of the Southern Federal District, also addressed a welcoming speech :

“Recently, on the basis of the Scientific Research Center of the Southern Federal District, we successfully held the interregional tournament “Math Battles” among schoolchildren in grades 8-10 from all over the South of Russia. Today, children in grades 9-10 participate in intellectual competitions in the social, humanities and economic sciences. This is a completely different competition format. You have an excellent opportunity to gain new knowledge from leading university teachers and representatives of the business community and immediately apply it to solve a real-life problem.”

At the Media Hackathon of the SUSC Southern Federal District, each participant had the opportunity to solve a specific social or marketing problem, try themselves as a specialist involved in one or another area in the media sphere: design, SMM, journalism and others.

The cases covered a variety of areas, including the history of Russia and the Don region. Workshops were also held during the hackathon. The speakers of the workshops were specialist of the Center for Public Communications of SFU Arina Ustinova, head of the Department of Advertising and Public Relations of SFU Alexander Ovrutsky, teacher of the Faculty of Business “Captains”, marketer Tatyana Tretyakova and other experts.

So, our winners and runners-up:

— In the “Media Concept” section, the “3k1” team won with a case from the “Sila” coworking center.

The winner was the Lightning McQueen team , which presented a creative solution to a case about promoting the scientific podcast “Generation Science ,” which is supervised by the SFU Center for Public Communications.

— “Khrushchevki ” won in the “Digital Marketing” section ; the guys showed how complex scientific articles can be adapted for a wide audience.

The winners were the “Comedy Woman” team with a program to promote the master’s program of the SFU Research Institute of Physics “Biophysics, Bioinformatics and Neurotechnology”.

Congratulations to all participants and winners of the Media Hackathon of the Scientific Research Center of the Southern Federal District! We wish you new achievements, development and implementation of your projects!