Rising Youth Hackaton at RomeCup 2024: An interview with Salvatore De Caro
Once again, SAP Italia has chosen RomeCup for the final hackathon of Project Rising Youth. The initiative, now in its third edition, helps students acquire and strengthen the digital and soft skills necessary to face the challenges and continuous changes of the job market. The students who participated in training sessions on emerging intelligent technologies (from AI to RPA) during the year will compete in a hackathon on sustainability to develop a product or service that respects the environment and people, both as employees, consumers, and communities. On March 21, from 2:00 to 5:00 pm, students will work at the Engineering Macro Area of “Tor Vergata” University of Rome to finalize their prototypes, developed with SAP technologies, and participate in the final pitch before a jury of experts from the Fondazione Mondo Digitale, SAP, and SAP Partners.
Onelia Onorati interviewed Salvatore De Caro, Solution Advisor Director EMEA South at SAP, to learn more about how the company is responding to the challenges posed at RomeCup 2024.
What is SAP's commitment to innovation for sustainability?
SAP aspires to a greener, cleaner, and more equal world – a world with zero emissions, zero waste, and zero inequality. And we develop the technology and innovation necessary to make this vision a reality, both to improve ourselves and to help our customers integrate sustainability into their business processes. Considering that 77% of global business transactions involve SAP systems, it is clear that we have a great responsibility on how companies can become smarter and more ethical. We develop solutions for ESG reporting that allow environmental, social, and financial data to be connected holistically and help to guide business decisions; solutions to reduce ecological footprints, incorporate sustainability into supply chains, and develop corporate sustainability models; solutions to understand the impact of companies on people and society, and much more.
Once again, SAP is a partner of RomeCup 2024. What are the reasons that led you to join the Italian multi-event on artificial intelligence and robotics?
The world of work is changing at the speed of light and the continuous emergence of new technology is one of the causes of this change. Over 2022-2026, according to Unioncamere-Anpal, we may lack 50 thousand graduates, especially in the medical-health fields, in the economic-statistics area, and in various areas of STEM. Moreover, the demand for profiles with skills in scientific and technological subjects is destined to increase. It is everyone’s responsibility - schools, families, the third sector and companies - to ensure that young men and women complete their school career in the coming years and enter the world of work with the necessary skills and knowledge. Artificial Intelligence and robotics are among the innovations destined to have the greatest impact on the world of work and, more generally, on many other aspects of our daily lives. This is why it is important for us to support RomeCup again this year and do our part to reduce the skills gap.
Can you tell us about the event connected to Project Rising Youth that will be held on March 21?
Over the past few months, Project Rising Youth has involved 300 secondary school students in a series of meetings to delve deeper into issues at the centre of the digital transformation that is being experienced by the world of work: the advantages that new technology brings to to companies to make them more sustainable and intelligent; the potential of AI to help people be more productive and efficient; low-code and no-code technology for the creation of innovative apps even by those who are not technology experts.
In the afternoon of March 21, as part of Rome Cup, a hackathon will be held for the students who participated in the project. They will have to develop a business idea based on the use of intelligent technology with a significant component of social environmental sustainability and present it with a pitch (just as if they were start-ups looking for funding) to a jury made up of SAP and partners.
