How do you run a hackathon in a museum? New technologies and business in the National Museum in Warsaw
Concept (Ewa Drygalska)
I started working in the National Museum in Warsaw in June 2017, coming into this cultural institution straight from academic circles which were exploring the use of new technologies in disciplines that traditionally fall under the humanities umbrella.
That’s the aim of, for example, digital humanities and new media art, which believe that a multidirectional cooperation between engineers and representatives of the humanities can produce unexpected and innovative solutions. While participating in numerous international conferences and workshops in Digital Humanities, I came across many highly interesting heritage projects which aimed to take better advantage of the rapidly growing digital heritage resources.
While a mass digitalization of collections has been one of the key priorities in the field of culture, we still don’t give enough thought about how we can exploit these new digital archives and what purpose they could really serve. Today, it’s impossible to run modern museums without being open to new technologies, both the “hidden” ones — which improve the running of the institution from within — as well as those that are visible to the visitors, such as, for example, multimedia exhibitions.
At the same time, it’s impossible to ignore the rapid development of AI-related technologies. AI solutions, based either on “weak” intelligence (for lack of better term) — used to improve and automate numerous processes — or on constantly improving machine learning, will soon become standard and initiate yet another digital revolution. The point is not to use the technologies at random (in which case, it always becomes a useless tool), but to adapt the solutions to the particular needs of a given museum.
Such an approach imposes project team cooperation oriented towards a shared goal. That’s why we chose the already-tested formula of a hackathon, which combines different competencies and provides a space to experiment and share knowledge. Hackathons have been held all over the world for many years now, they’ve been used by different disciplines, lately also by museums, libraries and other cultural institutions. They provide an opportunity to bring together people with different skills, such as programmers, art historians, designers and representatives of the humanities.
The NMW is visited annually by hundreds of thousands of people who see exhibitions and permanent galleries, take part in workshops, lectures and other events. The main goal of this hackathon and the projects developed during it was to provide audiences with easier access to information and the museum’s vast resources, as well as to facilitate the exploration of the museum’s collections, both virtual and in-house. Artificial Intelligence proved helpful in that regard with a virtual assistant ready 24/7 to answer any questions, an engaging artbot or an app which can guide you throughout your visit to the museum.
2. Initial challenges
Holding such an event at an institution with more than a century-long tradition, as well as one that follows its own rules, proved to be quite a challenge. While content-related and organizational support was immediately offered by such organizations as Koduj dla Polski, Techsoup, Centrum Cyfrowe or Waw.ac (for a comprehensive list of our partners go here), the problematic issue that remained was funding. An exhaustive search for a strategic partner took a few months. We got in touch with many technology companies, start-ups and corporations.
Personal contact proved the most beneficial: it offered the possibility to present your idea in person in front of someone who was willing to listen, ask questions and could believe in our project. We needed a bit of luck too: the Polish Development Fund (PFR) was had just been launched and they were looking for ideas such as ours, ones that put innovative technologies to the test in novel, nonobvious fields.
That is why it’s worth aiming at specific targets: reach out to companies or institutions whose statutory goals include supporting initiatives of a given profile. Nothing can replace thorough research, keeping a close eye on the world of technology and, finally, networking, which often starts during business meetings, meet-ups and conferences.
Having gained the support of the PFR foundation, we had to put together the right team, one that allowed us to effectively implement our ideas. From the technical and graphic side, we had help from the IT department of the National Museum, which was more than eager to accept such a challenge. I invited Sylwia Żółkiewska, with whom we had an opportunity to work in Pracownia Otwierania Kultury, to join the project and work with us on the content and coordination. From that moment on, the hackathon became our joint project.
3. The hackathon formula and proceedings (Sylwia Żółkiewska and Ewa Drygalska)
Practically from the very start, our goal was to organize a hackathon whose results would address the real needs of audiences and museum employees. We also wanted the produced solutions to be implementable in a short amount of time, as well as — most importantly — cheap for the museum to produce and maintain. We didn’t want to create highly sophisticated software that wouldn’t serve any purpose.
That’s why we decided to base our content-planning for the hackathon and its proceedings on the design thinking method, used by companies and institutions all over the world to develop innovative products and services stemming from a profound understanding of the users’ problems and needs.
The phases of discovery (research, data analysis, overview of trends and inspirations) and interpretation (imagining the audiences and their needs, empathizing) were done mainly outside of the hackathon as such. We compiled a list of the most interesting examples known to us of the applications of Artificial Intelligence in cultural institutions, we drew up challenges for the participants (available at: HackArt NMW) and organized a deliberative event with the museum’s employees, during which we managed to list and characterize specific groups of the audience that could gain not only facilitated contact with the NMW, but also access to the museum’s resources, thanks to tools based on Artificial Intelligence.
The outcome of design thinking workshops with the NMW employees, photographed by Michał Murawski.
We shared all that knowledge with the participants and taught them the method itself during the first part of the hackathon. We really hit the bull’s-eye with inviting Klaudia Szajkowska, a specialist from the digitalization department, to participate in the meeting and patiently answer questions about each of the audience groups.
Although some teams came to the hackathon with very specific ideas, learning about the audiences and the design thinking method helped them verify their concepts and adjust them better to the audiences’ actual needs.
It’s worth remembering that we had invited interdisciplinary teams consisting not only of programmers, but also designers, art historians, graphic designers or user experience experts to participate in the hackathon. Thanks to that, each team was generally self-sufficient and we were guaranteed that balance would be kept between technology and an understanding of the users’ needs. As organizers, we were also encouraging teams to dedicate the most part of their first day to creating or verifying their idea, developing prototypes and testing them on the audience before moving on to the phase of software writing. We were urging participants to “get their hands dirty”, enter the space of the museum and ask questions to visitors to learn more about them.
All this gave more food for thought and allowed the teams to create proposals deeply rooted in the reality of the museum and its audiences.
The second day was the time for perfecting the prototypes: creating the mock-ups, designing the main screens and parts of the software, as well as preparing a presentation for the jury. In order to make the presented content uniform and to even out the teams’ chances, so that the jury’s verdict was based purely on a project’s content rather than its visuals, we prepared a template for the presentations. We also defined the time each team has to present their idea to the jury and the audience.
Both the mentors and the participants — not to mention the jury — praised us for that solution, which they considered operative and effective, even though for some teams, especially the less experienced ones, it proved difficult to complete their projects within the given time frame.
4. More than just a hackathon
It’s worth noting that the hackathon was also designed as a networking event for representatives of various fields and disciplines and it was meant to have educational value. We invited over 20 mentors — professionals from companies, startups and NGOs working in business or culture — to take part in the event and provide support to the participants by sharing their knowledge with them.
We wanted their unique knowledge and experience to inspire and push the ideas behind each developed project forward, that’s why we had the mentors give lectures throughout the event with one member of each team being required to participate in them.
As we already mentioned, we dedicated the initial part of the hackathon to familiarizing the participants with the results of the deliberative event and our research on the applications of AI in museums, as well as introducing them to our design thinking method and discussing its phases.
It was important for us that the participants felt like they had gained useful knowledge and skills, even if they hadn’t won the prize.
5. Conclusion: what worked — a success story
Even though HackArt NMW was the first ever hackathon in Poland run in an art museum (and the first run by us), thanks to our previous experience in promotion and organization of other events (such as FAM Mobile Apps and Games Forum), as well as in managing projects and interdisciplinary teams, everything went according to plan. We owe a huge part of that success to our partners, who were willing to help and advise us every step of the way.
An evaluation questionnaire helped us receive the participants’ feedback, as well as sum up their thoughts and experiences. 9 out of 10 hackathon participants thought that we managed to inspire them and expressed willingness to take part in such an event again. The biggest positive in their eyes was the unlimited support of mentors from different fields and disciplines, they were hoping, however, to get some more time for integration after the event. Time spent sharing some cake and chatting over a glass of champagne proved insufficient — it wasn’t enough to strengthen the bonds that had quickly formed during an intense cooperation towards a mutual goal.
There were 40 participants, 8 teams and over 20 mentors taking part in the hackathon. The projects presented by the participants exceeded our expectations in terms of creativity and maturity in the choice of technological means. The first prize went to team “DS” with their web application designed to make visits to the museum easier through automatic image recognition by using Google Cloud Vision and Tensorflow Object Detection. The second prize went to team “Stańczyk” for their personalized chatbot/virtual assistant for the museum, in the implementation of which will help Wandlee, the sole official partner of Facebook in Poland who supplies chatbots. The third prize was awarded to the “InterActive” team, who created a prototype of an application using augmented reality, based on AR core technology.
All three teams expressed a willingness to continue their cooperation with the museum. As soon as the event was over, we began working together on implementing the post-hackathon projects, which will continue for the next few months. The nature of each project is different, the ideas are being developed on an ongoing basis, which is extremely stimulating. We are documenting the whole process in detail, which we are planning to publish as a blog so that, for example, other institutions interested in developing ideas related to new technologies can benefit from our experiences.
A few pro tips:
- think your hackathon through and prepare a plan, so that the participants know what they will be working on at a given stage; it will help them plan their work better within their team and produce ideas that can be truly useful in your institution;
- don’t focus on creating advanced software, but rather on whether the developed ideas address real needs of the audience;
- take advantage of the potential of your institution, its employees and visitors — they are a true fount of knowledge for a hackathon’s participants;
- make sure you can get partners and mentors involved in your event to provide support through their knowledge and experience;
- be there for the participants throughout the whole hackathon, support them, share your expertise, devote your time to understanding their ideas and technological solutions: you are doing this together;
- ensure comfort for the participants: pleasant atmosphere, a place to rest, healthy food, as well as time for integration and support before and after the hackathon.
Written by: Ewa Drygalska and Sylwia Żółkiewska
Ewa Drygalska, HackArt NMW coordinator, a graduate of Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program “Society-Technologies-Environment”, holding a PhD in art studies from Jagiellonian University. Winner of the Fulbright Junior Research Award at the University of California in Los Angeles, where she was doing research on film culture. Co-editor of two book publications: Kino afroamerykańskie. Twórcy, dzieła, zjawiska (2015) and Interfaces, codes, symbols. The future of communication (Laboratorium Przyszłości ⁄ Miasto Wrocław 2016). She is in charge of communication in the National Museum of Warsaw. Contact info: edrygalska@mnw.art.pl
Sylwia Żółkiewska, content consultant at HackArt NMW, designer, creative manager and co-author of publications such as Business in the mobile world (Poltext 2018, nominated for Economicus Prize), Culture, Business, Applications. Success stories of Polish mobile apps (Culture Shock Foundation, 2017). She gives lectures and holds workshops in mobile apps for different audience groups. She supports institutions and organizations in designing innovative solutions at the meeting point of culture, education and new technologies. More at: www.zolkiewska.pl, www.aplikacjewkulturze.pl. Contact info: sylwia@zolkiewska.pl
