"Innovate4Vienna" helps to keep businesses and institutions in Vienna running. The first funded projects have been established.

25 promising projects have already been submitted in the first two weeks of "Innovate4Vienna", and the most promising have been selected for funding by a jury of experts. In order to enable companies to start realising promising projects quickly, "Innovate4Vienna" has four submission phases, after each phase there is a jury selection of projects that are eligible for funding and after that the first cash flow to Viennese companies can already take place. After the first phase has just been completed, the next submission phase ends on May 4, with the last two phases scheduled for the end of May and the end of June.

The Happylab and the datenschutz innovationsagentur are among the funded projects of the first submission phase:

• Happylab's "Austrian COVID-19 Crowd Printing" project calls on motivated "makers" to make their private 3D printers available for the production of face protection made of Plexiglas and certified respirators. Roland Stelzer, founder and CEO of Happylap says: "Our Covid-19 Crowd Printing combines the capacities of over 800 private 3D printers into one large distributed factory. This allows us to produce thousands of face shields for doctors' offices, pharmacies or grocery stores within a few days". Happylab - an open workshop in front of Corona, which gave the general public access to digital production machines (laser cutters, CNC cutters), changed over to the crisis and initially produced these faceshields on their 3D printers at cost price. Since the enormous rush could not be handled with its own equipment, Happylab now launched the "Crowd Printing" project. "In the next step, we want to produce high-quality respiratory masks for hospital staff in this way. We are working intensively with hospital operators on the design of the masks, and the first prototypes are already finished," says Roland Stelzer.
• How can institutions that offer care and leisure activities for children during the holidays best keep in touch with children and guardians in times of Corona? How can they communicate the changes to their services - which are necessary due to the ongoing changes in legal requirements - quickly and easily? The datenwerk innovationsagentur has thought about this and developed an app. Petra Permesser, project manager at datenwerk: "With the new holiday offer app, Viennese children know what's going on in summer. For example, we use virtual points to collect. Through this gamification element, children are encouraged to actively participate instead of passive consumption". And the managing director of datenwerk, Wolfgang Zeglovits, adds: "This year more children will stay in Vienna during the holidays than ever before. It is therefore necessary that parents know what activities are taking place and can trust that their children are well looked after.". WienXtra is already on board as the first pilot customer for datenwerk's holiday game app.

Vienna, 30.4.2020