48 hours of challenge and change

It is amazing where learning opportunities materialise, an innocuous piece of activity, stimulated a conversation and prompted a post, that led to a comment, which attracted someone’s attention and an invite to attend my first hackathon arrived.

Having never engaged from a participatory perspective in an event like this before, I was a mentor on one a few years ago, I was intrigued and excited to get involved.

The #EUvsVirus event attracted over 8,500 participants, innovators, entrepreneurs, coders, social scientists and academics, a disparate cohort of people coming together in a virtual whirlwind, to address the issues that we all face at this time of crisis, isolation, a new-normal, employment and future health, wealth and social cohesion.

I registered via Devpost ‘The Home of Hackathons’ – introduced myself, created a profile, tagged my experiences and skills, and then felt a little flat. What do I do now? There seemed to be an endless array of options and causes flying around, challenges that were listed under multiple different sectors. At that moment I felt a little lost and out of my depth, not knowing what might be expected of me or if anyone would be interested. A virgin hackathon participant who arrived late to the party, stood in the corner of a crowded room not quite knowing who had the tastiest snacks, and the greatest conversations.

This anxiety subsided as I followed a prompt to register and introduce myself through ‘Slack’ a medium not unknown to me. I think had it been I might have been even more flummoxed. Within a few minutes two invites to join a team came along, I felt flattered not knowing if this was the norm or if everyone else had many more. Who knew and I didn’t ask, I just took a look at the two projects, and chose the one I felt had the greater interest and the nicest approach?

The approach came via Beatrice, an academic from a Parisienne University, a focus on doing good and driving social change. She welcomed me and let me know why she was interested in my knowledge, systems thinking and financial background where her persuasions.

Beatrice was the challenge creator; she had registered her idea on Devpost for this hackathon some weeks prior, and attracted the interest of Rohit, an AI specialist, IT project manager, agile enthusiast and hackathon king from London. I was welcomed and went through the rest of the teams experienced, backgrounds including where they were living and what they were doing. 

It was clear that the team was geographically dispersed, there was Nadia from Romania and Judith from Spain – so now we had the challenge of knowing how we were going to communicate.

Zoom, the apparent technology of choice, was set up and the first meeting arranged. There are always tentative first steps like this, it seemed off to me that English was the chosen language of communication, I was half expecting French to be the language of choice, and I had Google translate on hand just in case my own poor abilities were found out. English it was then, and Beatrice started to explain and expand on her vision for the future. It takes time to familiarise yourself with accent and vocabulary especially of those who are not natural speakers, but even when they are, technical jargon can blow your mind. Anyway I listened intently, everyone did so, and we went around the Zoom screens each of us sizing each other up in terms of values and expected contributions.

Humans have an amazing propensity to engage, laughter was secondary at this stage, it was more about finding out about the person. The first zoom meeting lasted about an hour on that Friday night, it was encouraging to see everyone gradually unfurl like the stems of a fern, on a warm morning as the sun entices one more fleck of insight to be shone on.

The tasks we were looking at, the research that we needed to start thinking about and the work that we wanted to follow. Everyone contributed, the project clarity emerged, there was an inkling of an idea, which through discussion and sharing started to develop edges, still fragile, still forming but by the end of the Friday session (23:00) we had the formation of a number of avenues to explore.

Saturday started early (Paris is +1hour) – but I am early riser anyway, so we met Saturday morning and the development sessions starts, we planned out the ideas with a new sense of urgency and purpose, engaged freely through slack and many Zoom sessions and mentor meetings. There is always a part of you that suffers with imposter syndrome, but we overcome that sense of not belonging, out of one’s depth, quite quickly – especially when those around you are so supportive.

Amazingly everyone gelled, we had one of the earlier team members drop out, I was a little surprised but everyone else seemed wholly unphased, forgiving and simply just wanted to push on.

Our idea started to appear in a more formed way by the end of that Saturday, valuable insights from mentors who came in, nosed around and challenged the thinking. At this point I began being bolder around some of the ideas, The Weave has been looking at and researching how we can use blockchain technologies to develop a tool for open innovation within a regional innovation system. I started to feed in different aspects of this learning eventually shaping one business model with the learning from another, and equally letting this learning be a validation to our thinking in The Weave. It was an amazing test and validation of a previously undiscussed methodology, and everyone loved it. I picked up different insights, we shaped the outcome and by the Sunday now had the makings of a value proposition and a clear idea of problem, solution and approach that would need validation, but was something to validate.

The model is described by Judith in this final pitch video found here https://youtu.be/GGzpOEd1c-Y

I am hugely proud of what we put together over that time, inspired for our own approach. Learned more about challenge processes, experienced the joy of liberation that countered the current contained lockdown experience, and felt empowered that the ideas we are creating at The Weave, are appealing as well as fundable and deliverable in the long run.

If you are wondering what to do with yourself, the get involved, use your skills, meet new people not just on your doorstep but those sitting in garden flats in Spain, or apartments in Romania, Paris and Enfield.

The Weave is creating a platform for open-innovation that connects the resources and talent of the region to the problems that matter. We are a social impact organisation, seeking to build a business model that helps businesses to scale and create quality jobs that stop the daily exodus from our towns and cities. If you want to know more follow us at The Weave – get to know us – what we do and how we are building something that is scalable – that works for every region where there is a rich micro-business community proximate to a university.