Meet ... our contest manager Johanna Hellmich!

Johanna Hellmich – responsible for the CODE_n Contest procedure and contact person for our Top 50 Finalists

My main task for CODE_n is the overall handling of the contest. I’m the contact person for everyone who is interested in the contest and who wants to apply. I answer questions, give advice or share our experiences from the previous years. This means a lot of emails along the way but I’m happy to help.

When the application deadline is over, then comes the fun part: selecting the Top 50 finalists. Therefore I work closely together with our IT department who provides us with the tools we need to store the applicants’ data and to evaluate each startup. Furthermore we have a great partner on board, EY (formerly Ernst & Young), which helped us to a great amount in the evaluation process. We set up two expert teams within EY and GFT who defined the criteria “Innovation Degree”, “Quality of Business Case”, “Innovation of Technology” and “Quality of Presentation”. With the help of these criteria and a simple online evaluation tool the teams selected the Top 50 finalists.

We were all very excited to announce the Top 50 Finalists of the CODE_n14 Contest at the beginning of December and see their reactions. Once more: Congratulations to all of you!

What I really like about CODE_n is the team spirit. It’s always a very intense time with a massive amount of things to do but we support each other and help each other out whenever we can.

Johanna ist translating the German press article about PICOwatt for Jennifer Indovina (Tenrehte Technologies)

My very favourite part during the whole project, however, is the moment when I meet the startups at CeBIT for the very first time. It’s so great to see their excitement when they enter our innovation hall and when they finally realize that they are now a part of CODE_n. Those five days at CeBIT that you spend together as a “CODE_n family” are a lot of fun and really create a bond. With most of the startups we stay in touch throughout the year and follow their activities on Facebook, Twitter and in the press. It’s very interesting to see their progress and how they develop new ideas.

To our CODE_n14 finalists out there: We’re all looking forward to meeting you, getting to know you better and take you in our CODE_n Community! See you soon!