After a couple of weeks of voting and deliberations, the Sachsen Digital Awards were bestowed during the forum sachsen digital on the afternoon of December 14th. More than 200 digital experts from business, administration, science and society attended in the old slaughterhouse in Dresden. 

Our AI hackerspaces for Kids in Dresden, Freiberg and Görlitz were nominated as a finalist for the “Society'' category that is aimed at innovative, digital solutions that create specific social added value. They were recognised for their work organising free workshops and open events for kids and teenagers where they can explore their ideas and projects around AI with the help of expert volunteers as mentors. The hackerspaces are embedded within the network of Jugend hackt, a program that started in 2013 and has now spread all around the world to places like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Sri Lanka and India.

For these achievements, our hackerspaces got the 2nd prize in the Society category and won 15.000 € prize money. We sent our congratulations to all researchers involved in the initiative and their lead institutions in our local unit Matter at HZDR as well as HZDR, CASUS and HIF. 

The winner of the Society category was the Dresden University of Applied Sciences (FHD) - University of Applied Sciences Dresden, New Work Design Lab (Dresden), which is developing a VR learning application that can be used as a micro-learning unit in the apprenticeship electronics technician specialising in energy and building technology finds. 

With the award, the SMWA would like to draw attention to the many local actors with their diverse innovations and solution approaches in the course of digitization and honor outstanding contributions.