Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (20)
Similar to Hackathon
Similar to Hackathon (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Hackathon
- 1. So you wanna run a Hack-a-thon Bobby Singh @jabizz_ #GSD Don’t ask for permission Last Conference 2015 #LASTconf @jabizz_
- 2. What is a Hackathon? • People coming together to solve common problems through software, beer (sometimes food) and a desire to innovate!!
- 3. Why run Hackathons? • Culture, collaboration and learn • People are natural problem solvers – so let them solve! • Breaking organizational constraints, retain staff, motivate
- 4. • A customer problem or theme that resonates with people – SME & empathy – A product enhancement – An experiment • Shiney toys – loose their gloss Find a problem worth solving
- 5. • Understand your audience through personas (made popular by Alan Cooper) • Define the customer journey or user experience • Provide the audience with enough information to allow them to the problem statement Who are you solving it for?
- 6. • Encourage idea owners to pitch their ideas with a view to recruiting a team • People will naturally migrate to the idea that resonates to them the most – ‘self selection’ • Have a couple of pitching rounds • Go Social, T-shirts, stickers Pitching your ideas
- 7. Plan your tech toolkit • What environments will the teams use? • Experiment with new tools • Run technical briefing sessions • Leverage of collaboration tools – Trello, HipChat etc..
- 8. Judging • The Peoples Vote – Voting – Bragging Rights – Other prizes • Theme – Marketplace – Presentation style • The Judges Vote – Collaboration & cross- functional team – Creative Market-place – Working Software & Theme alignment • Prizes - Trophy (or something similar)
- 9. The day(s) • Have a laugh!! • Clear Agenda for the day or days • Be realistic about what you can achieve on the day(s) - MVP • Give people time to prepare their showcases • Be clear on the problem you are solving
- 10. The day after • Take the idea(s) to market! • Start planning your next one • Keep the trophy perpetual • Create a culture around driving change in the enterprise • Keep pushing the envelope & practice what you learn in your day-to-day!! (Don’t ask for permission - JDI)
- 11. Thank You Bobby Singh Active rule breaker, getting shit done, not asking for permission @jabizz_ #GSD
Editor's Notes
- Sometimes called hack fests, code fest, hack days etc… Ideally seeking to solve a genuine business or sociatal problem leveraging technology
- Help build culture and bring together like minded people, improve collaboration across your enterprise and just generally step away from the regular day to day Empower people – allow them to solve the problem – generally you will find those that are passionate about a problem or can resonate with the problem will naturally migrate towards it and seek to solve. Make the time to step away from the regular org constraints and shake it up a little
- So where do you get started? Find a problem worth solving either a genuine business problem that you can hone into or problem that everyone can relate to. If possible try and avoid using the hackathon to smash bugs!! Its cool and all but isnt that kind of part of the day job in product development? Find a problem that can be solved and allow peole to innovate and experiment with ideas. Empower the people to solve the problem - Don’t think I have seen a better example of this than at a uni I was recently working with – the problem was emapthy and how they could relate to their students, So after spending some money with expensive consultancies on digital strategies etc… we took a simple apporach of defining the emapthy situation as the problem created some student personas basedon real experience and threw to the students to solve - Avoid just fixing defects and using the hackathon as an excuse to spend another day trying to fix defects or get a release out Have some element of business problem solving
- Give the audience enough information to understand the problem. Give them the opportunity to pitch back their understanding of the problem and how they believe they would solve it Create some customer journeys, days in the life, invite SMEs to speak of the problems – on the ground, Ideally have the problem owner speak as to why this is a problem that needs solving
- Go through a couple of rounds of problem pitching To understand everyones understanding of the problem Playback the problem pitch the team and how it would be solved An approach would be for the idea owner to pitch the idea with the view to recruit a team – those that believe in the solution or idea will seek to migrate to your team. (through a general process of self selection) Invite all ares of your organisation to be involved – make it all inclusive – marketing and tech and leverage of everyones strength and desire to contribute. Guage ideas with your peers and identify the skills you need to bring it to life – make this part of your pitching request – i.e. Front end Dev, Designer etc… Look to have small squads of around 8-10 people including the idea owner to lead the team. Go social and build a brand around your hack day and generate the momentum – i.e. MPDMHackDay or BankHackday Have a long runnning Hashtag
- Stand up some dev infra – AWS, Expose APIs Ensure people accounts are setup and they have access to the accounts and can have a play with any of the services and apis prior to the day. Run some tooling sessions to iron out any pre-setup activities – and ensure everyone has access prior to the day not only to the tech but also the building if needed. Build familiarity with the technology being used
- You will wsnt to think about how you judge the ideas: You csn set criteria like: Theme relevance – to the problem Presentation or pitch Working software – how real is the solution being proposed Team dynamic (through observation) This also encourages a more granular focus on the idea or problem to be solved You can also look at how you want the teams to playback Either through a marketplace style or Formal presentation style – the more creative the better!
- Clear Agenda – ensure everyone is aware of timings: Key Timings: - Team check in – iron out any last minute shortages or tech constraints - When the market place or presentations are likely to commence - Clear on the judging criteria and when the judging channels will be opening - We use coin jars to capture votes and a judges scorecard fir judges vote Showcase workable solutions – ppt is fun but leaves you feeling empty. (so abit of idea pre-prep goes a long way) Don’t get constrained by tech pivot and improvise if you need to If yur doing a marketplace style – style it up and get the team involved in builing ur physical market place – even made it a judging criteria
- Clear Agenda – ensure everyone is aware of timings: Key Timings: - Team check in – iron out any last minute shortages or tech constraints - When the market place or presentations are likely to commence - Clear on the judging criteria and when the judging channels will be opening - We use coin jars to capture votes and a judges scorecard fir judges vote Showcase workable solutions – ppt is fun but leaves you feeling empty. (so abit of idea pre-prep goes a long way) Don’t get constrained by tech pivot and improvise if you need to If yur doing a marketplace style – style it up and get the team involved in builing ur physical market place – even made it a judging criteria
- Clear Agenda – ensure everyone is aware of timings: Key Timings: - Team check in – iron out any last minute shortages or tech constraints - When the market place or presentations are likely to commence - Clear on the judging criteria and when the judging channels will be opening - We use coin jars to capture votes and a judges scorecard fir judges vote Showcase workable solutions – ppt is fun but leaves you feeling empty. (so abit of idea pre-prep goes a long way) Don’t get constrained by tech pivot and improvise if you need to If yur doing a marketplace style – style it up and get the team involved in builing ur physical market place – even made it a judging criteria