Andrew Hassan reflects on the potential of virtual collaboration for solving intractable challenges and describes his hackathon team’s journey from problem to potential solution.
As Lead Scale Partner for the UNLEASH Global Innovation Lab, Chemonics was excited to organize and participate in a recent hackathon for UNLEASH alumni living in the GMT-4 time zone. The GMT-4 “hack” was one of six simultaneous hackathons that gathered 350 innovative thinkers from around the world to address challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.
1. Due to their high-touch, collaborative nature, hackathons – and innovation labs like UNLEASH – are often hosted as in-person events. How did UNLEASH and its partners bring the innovation process to life in a virtual environment, and what did you take away from the experience?
I think most people who have participated in a design sprint or hackathon equate the experience with a physical space filled with Post-it® notes as far as the eye can see. The challenge is: How do you replicate that experience solely through digital mediums? Throughout the weekend, my team used Slack for communicating with the hackathon organizers and coordinating consultations with the subject-matter experts who were on hand to assist. The organizers used Zoom to host the morning meeting and the end-of-day presentations for the teams in their respective time zone cohort. Facebook Live and YouTube were used to broadcast the pitches to the public. The teams then split into separate Zoom breakout rooms so that team members could connect with one another. My team chose to use Google Drive to develop our pitch slide deck in real time and share resources. We also used Miro, an online collaborative whiteboard platform that donated 300 licenses to participants for the weekend, to brainstorm and develop our solution. Miro took the place of all of those Post-it® notes!
What I took away from this digital experience is that collaboration and design thinking can happen outside the confines of four walls. My team members and I now have a level of comfort with these digital tools, which can incentivize co-creation even after we’ve left the “workshop.” I’ve seen enthusiasm waver after participants depart a physical space because within that space they are consumed by the challenge at hand. In a sense, the same high level of engagement that my team achieved during the hack can be more easily replicated as the mediums we used are still readily available. This sets us up to continue our efforts to further refine our solution. My team has met four times since the end of March!