A Hackathon With No Winners

Marathon, walkathon, telethon, hackathon. Tack on the “athon” suffix and you are left with an event associated with competition and endurance, ending with some kind of monetary reward or prize. Last night’s Jerusalem hackathon (#HackJLM) hosted by Made in Jerusalem and supported by the Leichtag Foundation, fresh.fund and Siftech was precisely the opposite. No competition, no prizes. The only reward was the feel good factor.

Selflessness was in the air as more than 20 tech start-ups volunteered from 6:00 PM — 1:00 AM to help nearly 30 NGOs craft solutions for all kinds of challenges. If you’ve ever worked in the third sector, you know all too well that staffing and budget constraints are de rigueur. You take any free help you can get. They offered advice, built platforms, designed Facebook pages and websites. They suggested CRM solutions, strategically targeted digital marketing campaigns, programmed apps, helped with UX, Google AdWords and social media content. All of it was offered freely, willingly, without a whiff of competition in the air.

And no monetary reward either for any of these tech start-ups. Not a penny. They volunteered their time to help those who help others. Someone once said that volunteers are not paid because they are worthless, but because they are priceless. Indeed they are and for that, all of you at the HackJLM: Jerusalem’s Social Hackathon last night are #MyJLMHeroes this week.

I saw many friends last night — Roy Munin, Rachel Wagner Rosenzweig, Hagai Agmon-Snir, Michal Shilor, מכון ירושלים למחקרי מדיניות — Jerusalem Institute for…, Zaki Djemal, דאבל ירושלמי دابل مقدسي Jerusalem Double, Yehuda Leibler, מדברות עברית نتكلّم العبريّة Speaking Hebrew, Adam Atzion, Yitz Woolf, ירושלים סובלנית Jerusalem Tolerance, Yael Frenkel and many more. Some gave and others received, but all of them embrace Churchill’s sage advice — we make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Originally published at www.facebook.com.