ÖzU Gender Ideathon is an event which includes different types of events designed by the ÖzU Gender Office within the scope of March 8. The main goal was to organize an innovative and solution-oriented event in line with the culture and vision of the university, by going beyond just organizing speeches on March 8. In order to reach the goal we conducted a preliminary investigation before starting the conducting events. When we examined the culture and vision of our university, the topics we wish to highlight for the March 8 event were as follows:

• Entrepreneur,
• Active participants,
• Where solutions are discussed as much as problems,
• Social benefit is taken into account,
• Sustainable and participatory,
• Opening space for critical thinking,
• Original.

Examining the disadvantages and the advantages of the current event and considering the vision of Özyeğin University; we decided to conduct an event in a format of hackathon/ideathon would be appropriate.  The competition format in which students identify the gender related problems and expected them to develop solutions to the identified problems overlapped with the goals in many areas. We adopted the concept of ideathon as our March 8 event instead of hackathon, as the topic was fed from a social field and mostly floated between abstract and concrete discussions. We decided to develop Ideathon format in appropriate with the culture of the University by changing some steps instead of conducting classically known Ideathon format. In this context, instead of a marathon consisting of only 24-48-72 hours, we created a design that supports this concept with a series of events that we will include all our stakeholders beforehand. Instead of narrowing the Ideathon with a specific theme, we kept the theme of the event as broad as possible.  We set out with the theme of "Gender Inequalities in Everyday Life" so that students from many different fields could participate to the event.

The activities we have designed and their objectives can be summarized as follows:

1. “Searching for Gender Inequalities in Everyday Life” Talk Series
In order to prepare students in terms of developing project proposals we organized a talk series with the aim of meeting students with the experts who identified problems and developed solutions on gender related issues. These speeches aimed to fed students’ ideas for the Ideathon stage. Also, organizing talk series maintained to increase the visibility of Gender Office by internal and external stakeholders. 

2. Feedback Days
We have planned 2 feedback days to explain this format to the students as the whole event process may be unfamiliar for most of the students. During the feedback days; it is maintained to give preliminary consultancy to the groups developing projects and to answer their questions.

3. Ideation Marathon - Workshops
With a 30-hour ideation marathon, we aimed for students to develop their projects. During this ideation marathon, we planned one-on-one workshops with experts from different fields and aimed for students to receive consultancy in different fields and strengthen their projects.

4. Poster Presentations
We aimed to increase the visibility of the event and strengthen the student projects by providing feedback to the students through poster presentations resulting from the ideation marathon.

5. Grand Final
We planned a closing event where students presented their projects, which they strengthened with the feedback they received, and where the top three groups determined by the jury evaluation would be awarded.

In the planning and implementation of the event process, we constantly gathered ideas from internal and external stakeholders and asked students for their opinions. We plan to organize the ÖzU Gender Ideathon format not only on March 8, but also frequently as an event format where we seek solutions to gender-based problems in line with common goals with internal and external stakeholders.