Some Musings on the SRG SSR Hackdays 2018
Recently I had the incredible opportunity to attend the SRG SSR Hackdays 2018 as a guest. I didn’t have to do anything, but for the sake of having done something nevertheless, I’m going to talk about the event, the pitches and my opinions thereof for a bit. The event was livestreamed, however it appears that unfortunately it is no longer available to watch by the time I’m uploading this to Medium.
As this event was held mainly in English due to it happening in Geneva and Zurich simultaneously, this post will be in English (the fact my notes all are in English made this decision a lot easier). I first thought of doing a German translation but soon realized the effort would not be worth it, and I don’t trust my French enough to do one in French.
The invitation to the event came as part of my attendance to the Medien-Barcamp Schweiz the following day (more on that in a later post). Roughly ten people who had signed up were invited to attend the pitches of the Hackdays, which had been going on for about a day at the point of our arrival. Once we entered the studio (usually used for quiz shows apparently), we were greeted by roughly 20 little “islands”; round tables, one belonging to each group, with laptops, paper cups and stacks of paper on each of them.
With only final touches still happening the presentations started quickly, where we as guests (the aforementioned ten and, from what I could tell, some others), got a quick explanation of the event and its goals:
Focusing around the subject of “Media and Artificial Intelligence”, groups in Geneva and Zurich had spent the past day creating concepts and turning them into (partially) working software. SRF APIs were provided (and from what I understand encouraged) to be used. Some of the groups had been established previously, while others had formed around an idea during the first phases of the event. Each group would have four minutes to pitch their idea and program, with Zurich and Geneva alternating. A livestream connection meant that both locations could follow what was happening at the other. During the pitches (and in a short period afterwards), participants could vote on their favourite idea online.
Because my descriptions and opinions of the various pitches ended up being really long, I decided to turn them into a separate post:
https://medium.com/p/841cb81211a0
I was not massively impressed by the Pitches, to be honest. While the limit of four minutes meant that the event didn’t take forever, it also made the explanations unsatisfying at times. The massive language barrier was also noticeable, which I suppose is bound to happen when running the event in a language that (almost) none of the contestants speak natively. While the livestream to Geneva was a good idea, the microphone quality wasn’t amazing at times, which together with the presenters’ strong accents (which I can’t blame them for, I have one too), meant that it was difficult to understand what was going on at times.
Furthermore, I feel like the core idea of “Media and Artificial Intelligence” was barely touched upon by a lot of the Pitches. I’m not sure if this was changed last minute, but I felt like quite a few concepts didn’t really fit to the theme of the Hackdays. What, in my opinion only increased this feeling was the fact that during the voting period, only the participants voted. I feel like inviting a few media professionals as a jury (to go along with the voting) would’ve helped pronounce the “media” part and maybe helped give the participants some pointers and suggestions before or during the pitches.
This isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy the event. I had an amazing time following the various pitches and talking with some of the people, to the point where if I knew more about either programming or design I’d consider signing up as a participant next time around (hey, if I have one year I might be able to accumulate that knowledge). It will be interesting to see if any of the projects get developed further and where they will end up in the end, something I may write about again if I ever see one of them “out in the wild”.
After the victory ceremony shortly after the end of the pitches, the event closed with an aperitif party, where I had the chance to talk with a few of the participants. As the event was officially over at this point and I had another place to be at, I left a few minutes into this, ready to return for the Medien-Barcamp the next day.
