Did #BuildWithAI but not finished.

Good morning everyone. (And just reading that it felt like a roll-call).

As I woke this morning Tuesday July 28th 0612 AEST / 0142 IST / 2000 GMT / 1312 PST, it is starting to kick in in terms of the last 4 days as part of the #BuildWithAI. As a Lead Mentor at this Global AI Hackathon, I've got a specific perspective of this event and much of the comments as the event came to the end - a common wish for others is to "give your some time" and ... "decompress" or "rest us". This is my way of doing ... and these are my thoughts as I decompress to bring this event to its conclusion.

I'm going to keep this brief as there is a series of thoughts come to mind around this event. This will be a series of articles on different aspects that I can being significant.

The number of people ... 4,000+ participants in the one hackathon

Just looking at the number, there's much to be said for 4,000 participants to be in the one space - and we were invited into the one slack workspace. Seeing that many names in the one workspace was cool. This was just the starting point ... as:

• There is only a certain bandwidth of how many people can you interact with; certain number and types of people that react, interact in the open; certain number of teams you can mentor; certain number of problems, ideas, solutions, stacks, models that you can get involved.
• Attrition was going to happen. The number of people that register vs the number of people that attended and participated vs the number of people that engaged with others and reached out. This is a reality.

That being said, the one thing that hackathon are known for is the space (ie the potential) for creativity and diversity. 4,000 people in the one space is a great start for that to happen.

There was a supply-chain affect ... inception, implementation and deliver

I came into this hackathon thinking ... I'm here as a Lead Mentor - so there are other mentors to support, I'm here as a past organiser - so helping the organisers to coordinate what needs to happen, I'm here as a sponsor - so the responsibility to endorse, advocate, support others with the technology that we provide was front of mind; I'm here as team lead with an Oracle team that I'm helping to coordinate. That being said, I didn't know where I would fit into (with the sea of 4,000 people).

Over that time, I could feel the progression of the teams that I interacted with:

• Inception - it always hard to find your way into a crowded room - this was no exception probably heighten by the digital divide and the physical distancing. There were lots of promotion of profiles and some engagement. It was inspiring and daunting at the same time with the amount / depth of experience. So the first 24 hours all about getting into our groove - forming teams, understanding the process, knowing our individual goals, standing up kit and accounts (e.g. onboarding people into Oracle Cloud)
• Implementation - wow ... even with only three challenges to focus on, the diversity of thinking of what was people were passionate about was encouraging. And for a period of time ... it felt silent - especially in the slack channel ... "Where is everyone?" ... and then BANG ... it was on - "we need this; we need that; how do you do this?" ... gaps and extensions; specific requirements - on datasets and expertise ... this is where we saw many teams reach out with their "ask". The next 24hrs was all about supporting and refining the idea and solutions into something that can converge. This probably went on for an elapsed 36hrs even down to the last 12 hours of the event itself - refine, refine, refine.
• Deliver - then it switched gears ... having spent almost 36hrs at tech support or mentor or a version of google search, the discussions changed to presenting the great work that people have achieved over this very short period of time. Because I came in at the end with some of these team being invited in as a "first-time view" of what's been achieved, I felt that I had to go back-to-basics - Design Thinking as a process, MVP as a product, who is your customer and who are you pitching to - done, complete, ship it.

This was global in a few different ways

This was a unique experience in that there was a #global theme to this event that I hadn't experienced before - working with teams across the different time zones; made up of team members from different parts of the world.

And it's not finished ...

This statement is true. For most of the mentors and competitors - the submissions are in. However, the judging starts now; the process of getting to that final conclusion and decision is in progress. This is the short term view of the hackathon itself.

The longer term view is that we now have 4,000+ people knowing more, having experienced more (in a shared moment) and more connected. This is something to be proud of and something that needs to be taken advantage of to continue to build because:

#CommunityMatters #ItTakesAVillage