What is a Hackathon Anyway?
Some personal thoughts from Guy Barnard
In October 2014, we “hacked” the company’s town hall event to announce our first annual Hackathon. You might have received a note from Paul or me last week describing the Hackathon, or maybe you attended the Lunch’n’Learn.
“A Hackathon is …. an event in which programmers, graphic designers, content strategists, interface designers, project managers and others collaborate intensively on projects … half competitive design event, half party, half Shark Tank (it’s 50% more fun)!”
If not, no worries. The purpose of this mini-series blog is to provide a bit more context on why we are doing this, what to expect if you participate, and how to maximize your chances of winning.
A Moment in History?
I firmly believe we are at a moment in history where technology forces are converging in an unprecedented way. While there have been transformational forces in the past (e.g., industrialization in the nineteenth century, mainframe era in the mid century, PC/client/server in the late twentieth century, Internet/eCommerce in the millennium), we have not seen three simultaneous forces of this magnitude with Big Data, Cloud, and Consumer Engagement (social/mobile) all converging at the same time as they are currently.
Such forces can create paradoxes. It is at times both significant challenge and yet a great privilege to be at the heart of technology in our space. We can celebrate success in progress, and yet be humbled at the pace of change required and the work still ahead. We can recognize our platform and solution suite is now largely built, and yet see the small-i innovation that is required to continue to learn and adapt.
Solving these paradoxes and harnessing the underlying forces will require multi-disciplinary collaboration and a type of technology talent that is unprecedented at our company and our partner-base, even on a now firm starting base.
A Hackathon represents a catalyst for creativity and innovation, an opportunity for new skills development, and at the same time brings us closer together whether technologists, scientists, human capital experts, marketing rappers, process designers, clinician/coaches or more. We’ll have teams in India and the US and will consider other remote locations on as-needed basis. Our preference is to put our digital stamp on Nashville.
The Mindset Shortage
Attracting and growing best technology talent will be a critical success factor of the Company, as will ensuring we all have sufficient breadth and depth of understanding in the new networked-economy.
We are not alone in thinking this. For example, at Harvard University, where the most popular course has for decades been “Introduction to Economics”, the Registrar reported last month that “Introduction to Computer Science” is now the leading course, perhaps indicating that in pretty much every area of study, computational methods and digital thinking are going to be important to the future.
So think of the Hackathon as a way to create ideas that will be developed into solutions to improve people’s lives; think of it as a way to fill tomorrow’s skillset shortage with today’s colleague and partner base. It’s not just for developers or technologists; its for anyone who can be creative, competitive, and wants to have fun in a learning, fruitful experience.
A well-proven path
Facebook’s timeline was created at exactly such an overnight Hackathon. Cisco started Hackathons a couple of years ago with 1 site, 5 teams, 30 participants. They now routinely reach more than 280 participants, 65 teams working together across 12 sites around the world, and create real solutions to real problems. We’ll see where we go with this, but the intent is for this to be the first of a series.
The Challenge, Should You Choose to Accept It
On Friday, December 5 at noon, teams will gather in the Teaming Room and via webcast. You’ll hear a specific challenge statement, get clear on the rules, get some useful tools and advice if you haven’t already picked it up from other forums, and divide into teaming rooms around World Headquarters.
We have two categories of entry; some teams will think about how they can write a software application to improve lives; the others will create clickable prototypes using drag and drop software, app generators, or more to be described in a future blog post. We’ll even run a class hosted by Chris Dancy for the non-coders on Friday afternoon.
On Friday evening, we'll have a community dinner, and a chance for the judges to perform an early check-in on progress, as all teams by this time will have declared their concept and approach. This check-in will start to factor into the order of presentation Saturday.
The hackletes continue overnight Friday into Saturday morning, of course having the option to go home if they prefer. Breakfast and lunch Saturday and “raid the pantry” midnight snacks will be available.
Saturday Family Visit
While we'll make arrangment for family to visit at most times, on Saturday we've planned some specific programming workshops for kids (whether or not their parents are participating, signups for all colleagues welcome) and an entertaining talk by our very own Chief Digital Officer, Chris Dancy.
Surviving the Shark Tank
If you've ever watched Shark Tank then perhaps you have a flavour of what to expect on Saturday at noon. An esteemed panel to be announced nearer the event will sit on a long table in the Teaming Room under our beautiful mural, but don't let the pleasant setting fool you.
Expect the questioning to be tough and the feedback brutal. Immediate family / partners are welcome as witnesses to the event.
We're confident the best solutions to the challenge with the best presentations pitches will win. One winning team in each category with $3000 for the coding challenge and $2000 for the non-coding challenge on offer, in cash equivalent or Company stock.
The event will wrap by 2pm, just over 24 hours after it started.
For more information, click here for Part II of this Story
