Making hackathons more inclusive.
By: Paul Wilshaw
Tags: Event Planning, Design, Mental Health, Hackathons, Technology

Using the above method will give you a clear direction that’s understood by everyone. For this example I decided to focus of mental health.

Problem statement

In the United Kingdom, mental healthcare services are in greater demand than ever.

One in four people will experience a mental health problem at some point in their lives.

(That’s a lot of people.)

Mental health conditions are increasing worldwide, with a 13% rise in the last decade up to 2017. WHO claims that around 20% of the world’s children and adolescents have a mental health condition. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among 15–29-year-olds (Mental health, n.d.).

The two most common mental health conditions, depression and anxiety, cost the global economy US$ 1 trillion each year. However, despite these figures, the global average of government health funding for mental health is less than 2% (Mental health, n.d.).

Healthcare systems and institutions are struggling to keep up with this increased demand, only providing, limited, acute and reactionary care; this approach is not well suited to the rising numbers of mental healthcare patients and an aging population that requires more preventative and long-term care.

To create a collaborative and knowledge sharing hackathon to solve mental healthcare service access problems for patients.

To raise awareness of robotic process automation (RPA) as a possible solution to a technical and non-technical audience.

If hackathons want to encourage delegates to develop or improve skills to contribute in approaching existing gender bias in computer science, the hackathon would need to provide incentives or materials for personal skills development rather than foster an environment that favours proficient skills utilisation (Richterich, 2017).

This hackathon plan aims to enable delegates to collaboratively solve with RPA, automation and AI to solve problems for the limited resources of mental healthcare solutions in the NHS.

Some example problems found by patients in the UK:

25% of patients have to wait for more than three months to see a specialist.

6% of patients have to wait for more than a year to see a specialist.

(Campbell, 2018)

Rather than using the hackathon as a competition, the intent is to educate delegates in automation, in particular, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and to encourage collaboration towards the shared goal of solving patient access to mental health services. Rather than separate teams formulating their CV Driven Development (CDD) goals towards a largely unfinished and unusable product at the end of the hackathon. CDD practice prioritises design and development choices enhancing individuals Curriculum Vitae over other potential solutions, regardless of the end-users needs (Jee, 2015).

To address diversity inclusion part of the delegate recruitment campaign will target colleges and universities in skilled and economic deprived areas, using Indices of Deprivation 2019 local authority dashboard. The maps reveal local authority data within England concerning income, employment, education and skills (English indices of deprivation 2019: mapping resources, 2019).

Fig. 1, Education, skills and training data, focused on Salford UK, from http://dclgapps.communities.gov.uk/imd/iod_index.html

Introduction

Hackathons are generally techno-creative events where delegates form teams in a physical location (Richterich, 2017) to solve a problem statement or brief defined by the organisers. Hackathons are generally competitive, with teams competing under the confines of limited time pressures for incentives such as prizes (Richterich, 2017).

The conventional aim of a hackathon is for teams, or individuals, to practice collaborative software development. The first time the term ‘hackathon’ was used to describe an event gathering volunteers software developers working together on an open-source operating system, OpenBSD, in 1999 (Richterich, 2017).

What started as a collaboration on open-source software ( freely allowing the source code to be added to or used in a completely new way) quickly became adopted by organisations (Richterich, 2017). These organisations started using hackathons to gather innovation ideas quickly through sponsorship and competitive competitions. Hackathons swiftly gained a different focus from that of collaboration. To often ostentatious sporting arenas of technical prowess and perfect pitches where prizes can sustain annual incomes (Folz, 2015). Many organisations translate the values of a longstanding hacker subculture into new work normalities, socialising workers to innovate while institutionalising teamwork under time-sensitive pressures. Most important, hackathons reorganise workspaces and work time, using ceremonies of play and singular rewards to gain new product ideas or solutions to existing problems without offering participants full-time jobs (Zukin and Papadantonakis, 2017).

In his Medium post titled ‘Selling Out and the Death of Hacker Culture’ (2015), former hackathon enthusiast Rodney Folz explains:

Hackers are expected to listen to hours of company talks before being allowed (allowed?!) to hack. There is a clear contractual transaction of goods and supply: your time, your résumés, and your intellectual labor in return for their dinner, their cheap sunglasses, and their shirts emblazoned with corporate logos (Folz, 2015).

While this comment reflects Folz’s own experience, I too have experienced similar ‘contractual transactions’ where my expertise and attendance of hackathons have been comparable. Attending a hackathon at Microsoft, I had to listen to numerous talks about different Microsoft products. Speeches around the hackathon brief and lectures from sponsoring companies on best practices and how to innovate. While these talks were interesting, they were not what I was expecting, that I would, upon arrival, start hacking, collaborating and networking. This hackathon experience was more educational than participation, especially during the first two days. The winning prize of a £500 restaurant voucher (Barclays takes the crown at Digital Wallet Foundry, 2013) was the reward for five days of 12+ hours of participation and positive public relations (PR) for both Microsoft and Barclays. While participants of hackathons, primarily, do not attend for the prize. Participants connect with each other; to network with corporate representatives and potential investors; to understand their location in “the technology ecosystem” that partner with hackathon organisers. Participants are well aware of these opportunities and use the event to promote and advance their career by enlisting both self-interest and a collective enthusiasm in the hackathons ceremonial participation and engagement (Zukin and Papadantonakis, 2017).

Diversity in hackathons can be problematic and may lead to biased solutions. While the general entry to a hackathon is between Free and £30, other financial considerations for delegates to supply personally owned technology, such as high-spec laptops, mobile phones or other gadgets like sensors, circuit boards and even robotics, aid the participating teams to produce their prototype. This high monetary barrier to entry often precludes participation from areas of low-income homes or ethnically diverse backgrounds. As observed by Zukin and Papadantonakis (2017), in their article’ Hackathons as Co-optation Ritual: Socializing Workers and Institutionalizing Innovation in the “New” Economy’. Most participants of The Hearst Hackathon (New York, 2015) were visibly male (80 per cent), Asian (50 per cent), and white (40 per cent). They were between the ages of 18 and 35, and many turned out to be students.

Participants’ technology choices, from hardware to software at hackathons seem particularly relevant to a lack of diversity, since the utilised tools are by no means neutral but have techno-political implications. Postigo suggests that technology acts as an opportunity allowing ‘for a particular relationship between consumer and content’ (Postigo, 2012). Choices of hardware and software exclude users that don’t have access to them freely. Often hackathon solutions already include the biases, dependencies, investment toward gaining software engineering skills, corporate relationships and economic outlay equal to that of the participants before the event is undertaken.

While hackathons can present ‘opportunistic design’ in order for teams or individuals to win its coveted prize and ‘bragging rights’ to claim victory. Often due to time pressure a ‘Frankenstein’ solution, that of coping and pasting code from websites such as Stack Overflow is acceptable and often necessary. It should be noted that hackathon solutions are far from production ready and require examination into furthering gender and social diverse future techno-creative endeavours. If the host organisation(s) are anticipating a comprehensive product in return of investment for hosting, then they will be disappointed. What hackathons excel at is rapidly proving concepts or multiple ideas that can form the basis of future development.

Aims and strategy

For an automation and AI hackathon.

The aim is to create a hackathon where delegates collaborate to solve the brief. The hackathon should provide educational material to inform and upskill delegates rather than requiring highly educated or skilled entrants. To de-focus the hackathon as a competitive event, allowing delegates of highly skilled computer engineers and delegates with little, experience in delivering technology software or applications.

The hackathon proposes to apply distinct aims and purpose for the hackathon. The delegates, have to create an automated process (or skill), website, mobile app or software, film, animation or podcast that would meet the purpose of a brief.

The organiser (myself) and delegates expect to solve an identified problem within the theme of mental health, directing participants to create an output for a specific problem.

Recruit mentors and practitioners, both in person and virtually that will tutor delegates in creating an automated process. Having mentors and practitioners directs the hackathon focus to one of learning and gaining new skills as reward and recognition for engaging in learning at the hackathon delegates will be awarded a Blue Prism RPA entry-level certificate. Other awards issued after the submission deadline to delegates will avoid competitive payouts for winning teams and merit awarded for teamwork, participation and acts of kindness during the event. Acknowledging previous hackathon submissions and their winning entries are prototypes that are not usable, insecure or ‘gaffer-taped’, ‘smoke and mirrors’ solutions that do not serve as a complete end-to-end technology solution.

My previous experience of organising hackathons has dictated offering free tickets always leads to a large percentage of ‘no-shows’. To limit the number of registrants obtaining tickets and then declining, the hackathon will charge delegates for tickets. The hackathons entry fees are to be donated to mental health charity CALM. To address the often prohibiting skills, technology and cultural barriers of hackathons, I propose offering around forty per cent free tickets to eligible delegates from diverse backgrounds and low-income households. Delegates who apply for a VIP pass through this scheme will automatically have necessary software and hardware provided to them if attending in person. While the hackathon wishes to provide the same level of support to virtual delegates, it acknowledges that this would be unfeasible.

Recruiting paying delegates would be, primarily, supported through social media awareness, referrals and organisers networks, supported by a dedicated website where potential

delegates can find out more information and purchase tickets. Some social posts will have supporting material, for example, videos (Video creative artefact) and Podcasts (Podcast creative artefact).

To recruit diverse delegates using data from the Indices of Deprivation 2019 local authority dashboard, Fig 1 in the overview section of this document, explicitly targeting schools, universities and colleges in these areas. Coordinating with their existing methods of communication, such as student newsletters, see email artefact, University websites and posters.

Core communication strategy examples for the hackathon, page 17 onwards, illustrate the hackathon design styles, digital accessibility and tone of voice. In this section, I have described the research methods to question design decisions and the results. Through testing these designs and assumptions of typical personas to relate with delegates throughout various methods of communication.