Performing Virtual Events during COVID-19 Pandemics: The case of the Startups Fair and Hackathon for New Educational Technologies in the Campo das Vertentes Region in Brazil

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic brought harsh social restrictions as part of the strategy to deal with the situation, which also required innovation to quickly adapt and keep providing substitutes through digital solutions. In response to this emergency, the local entrepreneurship ecosystem of São João del-Rei, Brazil, spent a great effort to tackle this new reality. This article presents the experience of performing virtual events to foster innovation and raise awareness of the local entrepreneurship culture. The first event was developed under the hackathon format, aiming to encourage the local community to propose technological innovation by developing solutions to assist distance learning in universities and high schools. The other event was a virtual fair presenting local startups to the audience, besides providing online courses related to entrepreneurship and new digital technologies. It is worth noting that those events were organized by a strategic coalition following the triple helix model of innovation, gathering universities, industry, and government. The results achieved through those events reinforce the importance of having an organized local strategic coalition to provide a fast response to social emergencies and provide better adaptation capability to society by creating innovations based on digital entrepreneurship. © 2021 ACM.