A comedy hackathon
Having fun while exploring serious solutions to tough, real-life problems
By Matthew Carroll
Most hackathons have a theme that brings together people with a common interest. But what if you hold a hackathon with companies that don’t have anything in common, except an eagerness to explore new ways of brainstorming answers to difficult problems? And what if you throw in some comedians, to loosen up the participants?
You end up with a successful hack.
The Comedy Hackathon held on Jan. 22–24 in Tokyo brought together about 60 people from about Japanese corporations — Toyota; Panasonic; Asahi Shimbun, the media company; Kozo Keikaku Engineering; NEC; Toppan Printing, and others. (Complete list at the bottom.) Many of the companies are members of the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, MA, which sent a team (myself included) to help facilitate.
Broken into teams, they addressed a number of real-world issues — mobility; aging; consumer electronics and artificial intelligence; entertainment; and learning.
The idea was to brainstorm and create something that would help solve these major problems. Groups could either try to create a prototype or present a more fully realized idea. In an interesting twist, a group of comedians acted as a spur, wandering among the groups, offering off-the-cuff assessments of the teams’ efforts.
Over the course of two days on Jan. 23–24, the teams kicked around ideas, scribbled on dozens of Post-it notes, ripped up Post-its, started from scratch, and finally demo’ed fascinating ideas.
The presentations ranged from rough prototypes to videos. The ideas ranged from insightful to quirky, from humorous to serious. The reaction from participants was enthusiastic. Hard work had been transformed into tangible results.
“Cuby” was a light designed to support the emotional expression and activity within a user’s life, and actually through generations. The tool, which resembled a “light ball”, would be given to newborns by parents. It would help educate a child. The colors it shows would express different emotions. It might even be small enough to be eaten.
The Aging Team conceived of a device that would project an inspirational character that you could see, who would encourage you during bad times — when you are about to drink too much, or light up a smoke. It would be with you until the day you died, even then whispering encouragement to you.
The Learning Team conceived of a way of educating people while they sleep — which, after all, is how we spend one-third of our lives. It could even replace learning while we are awake.
The “Heartful Crutch” was an effort to create a “smart crutch” and to turn the sight of one from a negative to positive experience — much like braces have been transformed through the use of colorful materials. The “smart crutch” would help users navigate through functional lighting and warning sounds. It would assist users going up stairs or hills, by shrinking and expanding. It would encourage users and if it was dropped, it would “jump” back up.
The “Mystery Vehicle” was less a vehicle than a community-building experience — it’s a moveable room. If a user has an interesting hobby –pickling vegetables, perhaps? — the room would move to where others who share your hobby are.
Ding Dong Ditch! is a smartphone game that advances an old-fashioned game. The old game is simple — ring a neighbor’s doorbell, then run. Simple but fun. The new game would include a map of doorbells to ring, as well as different levels of points, depending on how difficult it would be to ring the bell.
Here’s another smartphone idea — this one lets you text “smells.” Is your son not in a hurry to leave his friend’s house? Text him a whiff of your all-conquering curry. That will get him home in a hurry. It would work by combining a few major smells into a variety of odors, much like all colors can be created by combinations of three basic colors. (There was a very interesting question asked: Would you be able to record smells?)
BTW, here’s a story about my wonderful trip to Japan (“Five thoughts on why Japan is so different… and so great.”) Also, the Future of News initiative, which I run at the Media Lab, has also been involved in some other recent hackathons. Most recently, it helped run a Video News hack in New York, and before that a Mobile News hack at the Media Lab.
Comedy hackathons have also been held successfully elsewhere. For instance, Baratunde Thurston, an MIT director’s fellow, has held seven comedy hackathons, including one at the MIT Media Lab.
Here’s the list of Media Lab member companies which attended: Asahi Shimbun, Panasonic, Digital Garage, Toppan Printing, Toshiba Corp., Kozo Keikaku Engineering, Toyota, NEC, Monex, Dentsu, and CCC.
Was your company there and is not listed? Send me a note and I will add it in.
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Matt Carroll runs the Future of News initiative at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is a research scientist. Blog posts on everything I write can be found here.
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