10 tips before HackTheCrisis Sweden
You just registered for this weekend’s event HackTheCrisis Sweden? Maybe it’s even your first hackathon? Great! The more, the merrier!
Crowdsourcing can be an invaluable source of innovation when the right type of crowd tackles the right type of problem. Before you dive right in, we thought we’d give you a few tips and a few of our own “lessons learned” from taking part in a couple of hacks on what not to do in order to make a great contribution in the fight against the virus and its aftermath.
1. Don’t reinvent the wheel
HackTheCrisis Sweden is but one of many (46 so far!) other HackTheCrisis initiatives in the world and a lot of them have already taken place. This makes for an excellent opportunity to refine and recombine what has already been done! Before you start working on your genius idea, make sure you check out the other hackathons’ projects, many of them are in English and publish their code and other resources that you could build on!
Check out for instance WirvsVirus’ 1500 projects or HackTheCrisis Finland’s 230 projects and see if you can build on some of the code and research that was already done there!
Many civic tech and tech4good organisations have already been busy setting up projects, tools and websites. Check out existing initiatives from the Code for All network here and the Coronavirus Tech Handbook here.
Look at existing source code as well, thousands of developers have already gotten their hands on COVID-19 and many of them have shared their code on Github. And don’t forget to give back everything you write to the community!
2. Don’t build yet another social platform
Is the success of your idea depending on the fact that a large number of people use it? Are you relying on user crowdsourcing for the content? In that case, think twice (thrice) before you move forward with it. The strength of such platforms usually resides in the scale effect and it’s unlikely you will get it, especially if 20 similar initiatives see the light at the same time. A good example is the multitude of services appearing recently to connect people offering help and those needing it (nurses, elders…). Don’t spend your weekend developing one more!
In France, the civic tech community came together to develop a unique tool (source code here) and it has already been used by tens of thousands of people with a matching rate of almost 100% between helpseekers and givers.
3. Don’t build a new mobile app
Seriously, don’t. Unless your goal is to sharpen your mobile development skills. But understand that it’s unlikely anyone will be able to find it on an app store and bother installing it, especially among the most vulnerable communities. Instead, consider what type of channels they use in their everyday life in order to get information and help. It is likely not an app.
Try to think low tech or to reuse services and apps that already exist and might even be installed on people’s devices. A good example is dataprata.se the guide developed by Daresay to help people to get started with videocalls.
4. Don’t create a new visualisation (before reading this article)
As data people, we like to make sleek and flashy visualisations. They can be an incredibly powerful way to convey information to people. But visualisations can also be a source of misinformation, especially when created and consumed in a state of emergency and information overload. So make sure to read this article listing ten considerations before you create another chart about COVID-19 by Amanda Makulec.
5. Don’t repeat discussion topics in the team
Facilitate discussion of varied topics by creating teams whose members have different life experiences, technical training and educational backgrounds. By drawing on a more eclectic set of topics you will likely design a better idea and solution.
6. Don’t overestimate technology’s capabilities to solve a really complex problem
Being coders, we sometimes get the impression that most problems in life could be solved with a few algorithms, a well-trained machine learning model and a chatbot.
Be humble and be realistic about the problem you want to solve. In particular, the two following points can help you to find a use case where your solution can make an impact.
- Don’t solve a non-problem
Spend the main part of your time on identifying the root cause of a real-life problem, rather than building a solution for a trivial or underexplored problem.
- Don’t try to solve everyone’s problem
Focus on one aspect that is linked to one problem. Then choose the audience that will be helped by your solution — on individual, organizational or societal level. By breaking things down, your solution will be more concrete and useful than a hypothetical solution to everything.
7. Don’t dig in someone else’s backyard.
Use your own experiences and dig where you stand. Take the perspective of a parent, caregiver, child, family business owner or wherever you have real life experience. This will root your problematization in a reality that concerns people’s everyday life that you have in-depth knowledge about.
One example of an insight brought forward in the media lately is that abused women and children will suffer from isolation together with perpetrators, that are either physically or virtually present in their homes. This perspective is brought forward by those who experience it, and point to an aspect of the crisis that to a large part has been overlooked, opening up a gap for contribution — what unique perspective can you bring to the table?
OK, so let’s say you have agreed on what project to proceed with — now what?
8. Don’t discuss everything together ALL the time
When we collaborate with people we’ve never met before, we run the risk of assuming that we have to discuss and agree about every detail. However, research on crowdsource innovation has shown that teams who alternate between periods of independent work followed by “communication bursts” of high activity perform better than teams that communicate in continuous streams of messages. Set discussion time!
9. Don’t spend too much time building stuff
If you have a great idea, it is better to spend the time on developing the idea and focus on telling a clear story of how it would be developed into a tangible solution once you win. If your main competence is about building stuff, translate this into a competence of understanding how your solution would or could be designed,as well as the limitations to a technology that your peers might not be aware of.
10. Don’t forget to have a good time
To make the most out of this hackathon make sure you keep expectations on yourself, your team and the event itself on a realistic (but committed) note. The reality is that the majority of the amazing ideas and prototypes will not continue after the event is over.
That being said, that doesn’t make this weekend less important: No matter where you come from, we can assure you that this experience will bring you new friends, insights, perspectives and experiences that will make you grow an inch by monday. You won’t regret it!
And most importantly — have fun hacking! Don’t let this pandemic take away your happiness!
Written by Anna Fahlgård, PhD student at House of Innovation, Stockholm School of Economics & Pierre Mesure, civic tech and opengov activist at Digidem Lab & Civic Tech Sweden
