{"id":42335,"date":"2023-10-20T15:20:27","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/hackathons-really-can-spur-innovation-and-ignite-the-ideas-boom-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:20:27","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:20:27","slug":"hackathons-really-can-spur-innovation-and-ignite-the-ideas-boom-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/hackathons-really-can-spur-innovation-and-ignite-the-ideas-boom-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Hackathons really can spur innovation and ignite the “ideas boom” – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Red<\/div>\n

By Teresa Swist, Liam Magee and Rachel Hendery<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s 26 hours into the Random Hacks of Kindness hackathon, and I am on my ninth cup of coffee. We have just over five hours until \u201cshow and tell\u201d time, when we need to have a working mobile app.<\/p>\n

Among the screwed-up butcher\u2019s paper diagrams, leftover sandwiches and wafts of unshowered programmers in our corner of the office, one member of the group is staging an epic battle between jelly pythons, another is rewriting the video function of our app so that it will actually play video, and the third is having a change of heart entirely.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you think,\u201d he asks, \u201cwe should maybe build a solar-powered coffee cart instead?\u201c<\/p>\n

This chaotic \u2013 but typical \u2013 scene occurred during a hackathon in Western Sydney last December. Focused on solving a small but challenging problem, hackathons involve intensive periods of brainstorming, coding, designing, testing \u2013 and often much coffee drinking.<\/p>\n

Our event was one of the Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) series of hackathons also taking place in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Run over a weekend twice a year, the RHoK events focus on projects with social impact.<\/p>\n

They invite \u201cchange makers\u201d \u2013 community organisations, social enterprises and committed individuals \u2013 to pitch a problem to teams of volunteers. At the end of the weekend, a group of judges choose a winning team, and provide all the teams with feedback for developing their projects further.<\/p>\n

Igniting the \u2018Ideas Boom\u2019<\/h3>\n

Hackathons fit neatly with Australia\u2019s recent rhetorical pivot towards technology and innovation. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull\u2019s \u201cwelcome to the ideas boom\u201d invites the country to \u201ccreate a culture that backs good ideas and learns from taking risks and making mistakes\u201d and develop \u201dgreater collaboration between universities and businesses\u201d.<\/p>\n

Academics have been turning attention to the mechanisms that might enable such culture and collaboration. For instance, QUT\u2019s Marcus Foth has suggested that Australia needs a \u201cskunkworks\u201d. These are spaces of creative collaboration outside of routine organisational procedures that \u201cattract, house, support and unleash innovators, makers, thinkers and doers\u201d.<\/p>\n

From their origins as informal late nights run by a handful of technology enthusiasts, hackathons have evolved into well-coordinated, multi-project and sponsored workshops. They include social entrepreneurs, designers, researchers and other professionals as well as coders. They offer the temporal equivalent of a space for collaboration across research, government, industry and community sectors.<\/p>\n

But the rise of the hackathon has also invited scepticism. Do these novel \u201cproto-publics\u201d function as incubators for creativity and collaboration, as they claim? Or are they more like a technologically habilitated form of the military boot camp, the corporate retreat or the cult centre?<\/p>\n

Do the long hours, the sensory deprivation caused by constantly staring at screens, and a missionary zeal for technology instead induce a kind of collective faith in the object of a \u201cworking app\u201d? And what responsibility do hackathons have for the translation of technical outcomes to the kinds of social change they look to produce?<\/p>\n

Playing with fire<\/h3>\n

Our own response in the aftermath of the event was one of mild and exhausted euphoria, accompanied by a sense that each of the change-maker teams had developed a tangible product that would be helpful to the groups they were intended for.<\/p>\n

Under pressure of the tight timelines, each of the teams had, in their own way, \u201cgelled\u201d over the course of the two days. This was all the more remarkable since we had relatively few experienced hackathoners in our group.<\/p>\n

In a research environment, where time for consultation with project stakeholders can be difficult to find, the results seemed especially surprising. The hackathon promotes the idea of more regular, if still sporadic, bursts of high-intensity collaboration across diverse disciplinary and institutional boundaries. It\u2019s neither work nor hobby \u201cbut something of both\u201d.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, in the days following the event, we also registered a certain degree of scepticism about the \u201cnarrowing attention to issues that can be solved in a compressed timeframe”.<\/p>\n

In the cold light of day \u2013 during the working week that followed \u2013 we experienced a distinct anti-climax, as though the beneficial outcomes stemmed from a form of participant collusion during the event itself. It became increasingly difficult to convince others who had not attended the event about the technical and social miracles we had produced in such a short time and under duress.<\/p>\n

Each project would also need to address the question of how it would advance the weekend\u2019s work into a product: what would be the fate of these bursts of innovation and collaboration, produced under the effects of self-imposed confinement?<\/p>\n

After the fever<\/h3>\n

Both euphoria and anticlimax are perhaps understandable responses to the \u201cbootcamp\u201d atmosphere. In this respect, hackathons share much in common with the \u201cintensive culture\u201d infusing research, media, markets and work.<\/p>\n

This includes writing retreats, grant preparations, political campaigns, fitness and weight-loss programs, public talk competitions, agile work practices and \u201csprints\u201d in the software industry.<\/p>\n

As laboratories for translating ideas into implementation, hackathons hold exciting potential. To become enduring, they will need to prepare organisers, change makers and participants for the emotional rollercoasters that they invariably produce.<\/p>\n

As the word \u201chack\u201d itself suggests, they can involve the transgressive sense of breaking boundaries and making new links. Their role in building innovative cultures requires, though, more than feverish excitement and technological expertise.<\/p>\n

Other researchers have begun to study their effects in more detail, charting some of their challenges and benefits. Hackathons have become an \u201cinvaluable unique form of life worthy of careful investigation\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the current enthusiasm for building cultures of innovation, this investigation is now vital to ensure the broader \u201cideas boom\u201d doesn\u2019t prematurely go bust.<\/p>\n

Teresa Swist is a postdoctoral research fellow at Western Sydney University; Liam Magee is a senior research fellow of digital media at Western Sydney University and Rachel Hendery is a senior lecturer in digital humanities at Western Sydney University.<\/em>This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.<\/em><\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on Facebook<\/strong>, Twitter<\/strong>, LinkedIn<\/strong> and SoundCloud<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Teresa Swist, Liam Magee and Rachel Hendery It\u2019s 26 hours into the Random Hacks of Kindness hackathon, and I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42335"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}