The Unbiased Hackathon (A Real-Time Account) Part One

This post is a detailed account from the inception to execution of the Unbiased Hackathon that took place from the 16th - 18th of October 2023. This article is regarding the set-up of the event, and Part Two will recap the event itself.

Ideation - April 13th, 2023

We are scheduled for a team meeting to work on our CVs. We are currently looking for consultancy contracts for most of the team and are working out the best way to put together a CV. The topic becomes the photo portion of the CV and I do not react well. I cannot fathom why one would need a photo to decide on a candidate for hire. Jochem Feekes , who was running the workshop calls me afterward to discuss the very apparent irritation I had during the meeting. We speak for a bit, and I am spurred even further into my irritation that a photo is standard in the Netherlands. (To be clear Jochem was not harassing me about being irritated, or telling me I was wrong, he simply called to make sure I was ok.)

I ponder the practices that we consider standard and the same issue persists in my mind. "How I look, my age, my name, and my gender should not be a factor for the job I apply for. I should be hired based on the content of my character and the quality of my work, nothing else should matter."

My mind does not rest, and instead, I come up with an idea, what if CVs and resumes could be blind, similar to how some medical trials are administered? What if I could build something that redacts people's CVs and resumes, removes the most obvious biases, and leave the part that matters? A document that leaves your education, your experience, your skills, and nothing else. The following day is an office day, and after we have our standard daily stand-up I bring the idea up to the team. It is now April 14th, and I am just as fired up. I am also a bit nervous. It's my second week in a new company and I am the only woman. I'm still feeling out the team, and my outspokenness has gotten me into "trouble" in the very recent past at a different establishment. In fact my outspokenness has gotten me into "trouble" most of my life. I have been branded as "stubborn" since I was a child, a quality I recognize now as just being a woman who does not conform the way I am told to conform. I am the worst type of woman to many, many people, I will not go quietly, I will not tolerate injustice, and I will battle for what I deem right and fair, consequences be damned. I will speak my mind, and let the chips fall where they may. I deliver my monologue on the biases, and the ridiculousness of the system we accept because it is the devil we know. I stand my ground, ready for the arguments I am so used to being bombarded with. There are none. My team agrees with me, they add perspectives of their own, it's not just photos, it's age, it's location, it's any identifying material. I take my first deep breath ever in a professional setting. I am heard, I am understood, I am appreciated. Instead of fighting my own institution, it is us fighting the root of the cause, it saves time and morale.

From Idealization to MVP Discussion - May 1st, 2023

Chai Stofkoper is very onboard and wants to build the software during a hackathon with the three technical people at Adabtive . This is myself, Chai, and Brian Huijbers . Brian has two contracts, he is incredibly busy, so we will need to plan this for further down the road. We agreed on summer, as it is officially May I think this is reasonable enough, we can do this in July. I am not keen on the hackathon, I want it to be a project we do during our office Fridays over the stretch of the month of July. Brian brings about a good point, which is that continuous work on this project is best, we would lose momentum and forget what we are doing if we spread it out. I am not keen on a hackathon at our office. It's two hours from my home, and hackathons are usually longer days and often nights, it's not a standard work day. That means that even if I only work 10 hours a day on this hackathon it's still a 14-hour day for me...multiple days in a row. That is the best-case scenario where the trains run properly (hahaha), and I don't get caught up in some coding bug that requires me to sit and unravel its cause for hours or any other unplannable roadblock that could come up. I can do it, but once I left my twenties I decided not to work myself to death, a boundary I constantly am challenged with, I have an American mentality, and that isn't a good thing.

We had a meeting to discuss the qualities of the MVP for this software idea, which originally I called "anonymizer" but then changed it to "Unbiased" because I felt it was more indicative of the purpose of the project. The dream scope of Unbiased is as follows: A full-service software that takes people's CVs and resumes (and cover letters) and redacts or changes the potentially biased information. The hiring manager receives the documents where there is a number placed on the resume. If the qualifications are a match for the desired job posting the hiring manager can star the applicant. This triggers a scheduling system that allows the pre-determined interview time slots (that the hiring manager has selected) to be emailed to the candidate. Once the candidate selects the time that works best for them it is scheduled in the system for the hiring manager with the resume number. The candidate is emailed a confirmation and their number. The hiring manager will call the number, and this is the first time the candidate will be identified. The software will then ask after the interview if the candidate will be moving forward. Whether they are or are not there will be a reasoning selection. The software will store this data and use it to identify possible in-person biases and hiring trends. Imagine a hiring manager who receives data that they are 33% less likely to hire someone post-interview with an Arabic last name. The biased example I've just given could assist either the company or the hiring manager as an individual to become aware through their own personal statistics of biases, be they subconscious or not. It's almost impossible to solve a problem if you are unaware of it, and I choose to hope that many of these biases are unconscious choices due to deep-seated societal practices.

I speak on this as a Latina woman. I have first-hand experience with gender bias, age bias, immigrant bias, and ethnic bias. I have also experienced a wide range of responses regarding Unbiased as an idea, from the support and understanding of my team to people ( a very specific type) telling me this isn't a problem, or that it's easier being a woman than a man now. Changing tides will always meet with resistance, and I remind those against this idea of a quote by Bernice King.

"If you don't think representation matters, you're probably well represented." - Bernice King

The dream idea is not possible for an MVP. It's not lightweight, it would take some serious monetary and time-based investment. It would also have to be done in a very specific way and possibly need lawyers to ensure GDPR laws are abided by in terms of data and private information. We conversed on who should redact, the hiring manager or the candidate. The candidate's redacting information meant that they knew it was redacted before reaching the company, but contact information would be wrapped in that as well, making it virtually impossible for the hiring manager to contact the candidate for the interview. The hiring manager redacting information meant that at any point they could look at the original and gain all the possible biasing information we are working to remove. The main goal of this MVP is to redact the information and give people more of a chance at an interview. Speaking face-to-face with someone is an incredible opportunity to wipe away bias and replace it with real-world accounts of the person. This is obviously idealized and does go in the vein of assuming the bias is unconscious and not malicious. After a few hours of discussion, we have a basic outline of the MVP, and we agree to schedule another meeting and get this project on the books.

Codam X Adabtive Hackathon - July 18th, 2023

May and June move with a swiftness that has become all the more familiar as I have aged. Jochem and Chai acquire contracts, leaving very little time as a team together. We have not scheduled the hackathon, and though it has been brought up the timing simply has not aligned. Summer has been met with different focuses, and I find myself feeling like this project could float away. The morning of the 18th I contemplate this on my way into Codam. I still do schoolwork there and work during the day from the Codam building. I came up with the idea to host the hackathon in collaboration with my school Codam Coding College . Our school is all about inclusivity, equality, and making the tech world a better place. We strive for a population that is 50% women-identifying, this hackathon initiative is right up the alley of Codams' missions and values, a perfect coupling as Adabtive houses the same values. The same values I strive for in my personal life as well. I introduced the hackathon idea during our daily stand-up, and using our idea meritocracy decision-making scheme we decided it was a good idea to proceed. Then I spoke with events at the school. I was met with a "thank-you", but "what's in it for the students, they won't join without prizes." This left me feeling quite frustrated, as a student I didn't feel this was indicative of the student body. Yes, it is true that some people are motivated only by money, but is this really an initiative that we would encourage monetary joiners to be a part of? The answer is no. I am aware we live in the real world, and money is an excellent motivator, but changing the world isn't about a payday. It's often about thankless hard work, arguments, and discomfort. The MVP for Unbiased is meant to be free, this is not something I need monetary gain from. This is something I want there to be no barriers to entry for. I want companies to use the software, to actually change the tide of hiring practices in the world, and the base of this should be free. I won't exploit a societal problem to fatten my wallet. I want the people who join this hackathon to do so because they care about the topic, they want experience in the field, and to grow themselves and their portfolios while making the world a better place. What's in it for them? The chance to learn, to change the workforce, and to know they impacted societal problems directly. Myself and the events coordinator of Codam have a meeting to discuss the proposal next Wednesday, in the meantime, I will continue to work, as I know this is something I will accomplish.

Speaking with SheSharp - July 20th, 2023

The hackathon will be collaborative and not competitive. I need mentors. I am also now worried that people at school won't participate, so I possibly need outside participants as well. This evening I attended a summer networking event with SheSharp . I take this opportunity to speak to some of the amazing community moderators about Unbiased, and I'm met with an overwhelming level of support. I'm told they would love to be a part of the event and to send in a form officially through the site. SheSharp would be a perfect partner, their mission is perfectly aligned with Unbiased, and I'm proud to be a part of the community.

''SheSharp is a non-profit foundation that makes it easier for all women and non-binary people to?enter,?stay, and?grow?in the Tech industry.'' - The SheSharp Website

I am worried about finding enough mentors for the event. The students at Codam are mostly full-time, which means that they can do a work-week hackathon. Mentors however are professionals in the field, they have jobs and it will be difficult to get people to take time out of their very busy schedules to donate their time and expertise. I am lucky that SheSharp will support the event by posting about it in our community, but until everything is secure I won't fully rest.

Initial Planning - July 24th & 28th

The 24th is Adabtives' first-ever teambuilding event. I planned it for a month and had put together a series of silly and fun tasks to complete in Noorderpark, followed by a fun brunch together. The idea was that we would do silly tasks and team trivia. The person with the most points from the tasks and trivia would get a little trophy and of course everlasting glory. The weather turned in July and it ended up raining basically every day. I had to cancel the first part of the morning, which meant that all we got to do was brunch. We attempted to do trivia while we did the meal, but it was quite stressful. Toward the end of the meal, I brought up the hackathon to our two co-founders who are a part of our sister organization InQuisitive . I wanted to see if they would like to be involved. It was a pretty quick "Yes, let us know what we can do". We had a meeting together on the 28th for a possible contract for me. Once that wrapped we stayed and spoke with Christiaan Bouwmeester regarding what InQuisitive could bring to the hackathon. That morning Jochem and I had put together a business case for the event, and we discussed some "must haves" and some "nice to haves". We completely agreed that feeding the participants was a "must have", and worked towards a budget to make sure meals and snacks were given during the event. I also wanted an afterparty that would symbolize the end of the event and celebrate what we accomplished.

Meeting with Events - July 26th, 2023

Please keep in mind that this meeting does take place in between the last section. This means that by the 28th I did have dates for the event.

This meeting is when the event mechanics are decided. The event is going to be three days. I am told I can do this in October. I am instructed against excessive pre-planning and encouraged to have a portion of the first day set up as brainstorming so the participants make all the decisions and get to be really involved. I am advised to have a moderator who is outside my organization. Then I am asked how many participants the event should have. I say 30 is the max, and am hoping for at least 15. I am told to possibly expect less, especially since I won't have monetary prizes. I'm reminded of the numbers from the previous hackathons. I am consistently encouraged to get monetary prizes, but on this, I do not budge. I reiterate that I do not wish to have monetary prizes as it is not on message with the purpose of the event. I am tasked with sending out a survey to possible participants to see if they are interested in the event. This is not standard practice, but I agree, we are doing something completely different from past events, and that creates risk. We agree to introduce the event and ask for the survey to be completed in the weekly stand-up the following Monday.

Meeting with Students - July 31st, 2023

I introduce the idea of the event at the stand-up, give a deadline for that Thursday to fill in the survey, and wait. The survey was unsurprisingly pro hackathon. I had 35 responses (about 10% of the student body) with the following questions asked:

What is your main motivation for wanting to join this specific hackathon? (Multiple answers are allowed)

• 77% answered, " I care about the topic and want to help."
• 80% answered, " Experience/Portfolio Building"
• 11% answered, "Prizes"

If prizes are your motivation, what prizes are you interested in? (Multiple answers are allowed)

• 54% answered, "I am not motivated by prizes but by the cause."
• 68% answered, "I am not motivated by prizes but by the experience."
• 37% answered, "Winning a mentoring day with a professional in the field is attractive to me."
• 30% answered, "The hackathon being catered is a motivation for me."
• 2.9% answered, "Monetary prizes are my motivation."

The final question was left for open commenting, these responses ranged from insightful to spicy, and I am choosing not to share them here.

The main outcome was that I was given the go-ahead with the event.

Making Moderator & Mentor Moves - August 4th & Beyond, 2023

When I was informed of a need for Moderators I had a few ideas in mind, two actually. My direct supervisor Chai, who is brilliant and cool and decently patient, but I knew his contract work would prohibit him from being able to do the event for the entirety. My other thought was people who had mentored me in the past, Brian Johnson and Heather Johnson, MBA of Gozynta . I have a special kinship with this pair, they spoke at a Masterclass I attended the year prior, and took time with me privately for me to discuss my career aspirations. They are some of the coolest and kindest people I have ever met. I was nervous to ask them because I knew moderating would be a big undertaking and would take a lot of their time. It's a big ask, and when I worked up the nerve to ask I got a response immediately. I reached out to Heather first, and she immediately was intrigued and passed me along to Brian. They agreed to both be moderators, and the first hurdle was firmly off my plate. If even there are people you can trust to do a great job it's this pair. They also offered I reach out to their Head of Marketing to be one of the design team mentors, and I reached out to Faith Johnson who also accepted on the spot.

The same day I contacted Diego Lopez-Mobilia of Work.Town & Blacktree Interactive . Diego and I met at the AWS Summit and is another wonderful leader in the tech community. He was interested in also becoming a mentor and we scheduled a meeting to discuss the hackathon. Diego lives in Belgium and still donated three full days of his time to the event as our Technical Design Mentor.

It was so easy to get these first integral people that I thanked my lucky stars and it felt very surreal. My team had already agreed to mentor on day one, which meant in total I had a current mentor count of six. I knew I needed more, and I needed to ensure backup in case someone couldn't make it. I was waiting at that point to hear back from our sister company on who would be sent from them for each day, so I knew I would be covered for the Testing team mentor(s) soon.

Over the course of the next week, I reached out to Mariah Laqua , Emanuele Parlascino , and Brian Wilkins for possible mentor positions. All accepted. Brian W. is a wonderful human being, engineer, and personal friend of mine from the States. I had an idea that he could be an "after-hours" mentor, someone participants who stayed late could rely on for technical help when the day mentors had left. He is on the West Coast, so the time change is perfect for him to come online right when the mentors here in Europe would be wrapping up their day. Brian being on the after-hours team meant that I needed to get a second after-hours mentor to make sure the workload wasn't too heavy and to fail-save each other in case someone couldn't make it. I thought about who I knew in the right time zone and who would be a good match and I came up with another buddy of mine. Aaron Brandenberger is a very cool engineer based in the Denver region who had a bit of free time lately since he was one of the unlucky many to have been short-changed in the Twitter takeover by their new evil overlord. There has been very little positive from the Twitter debacle, but Aaron choosing to take some time to himself after leaving was very fortuitous for the event. Mariah is a friend and a community pillar at SheSharp , she was a virtual front-end mentor for the event, and one of the options for the "Win a Day with an Industry Professional" prize that was being raffled off at the end of the event. Emanuele I met when he was an instructor for a C# and .NET boot camp. He is a quietly determined professional who was happy to help as a front-end mentor.

Not one person I asked said no, and that is a serious testament to the amazing people I am surrounded by.

All of my mentors were secured aside from Testing, who I trusted would come eventually from our sister company. These mentors were unique to me, as they were the only mentors that I had not met personally before the event. I was nervous about this aspect, but I had faith in the company itself and was confident that whoever donated their time would be top-notch. I was pleased that two people signed up to donate their time Addy Zwiebel and Eelco Peeks . They would be my Testing team mentors and it meant that this portion of the planning could be put to bed.

Unlucky with Financial Sponsors

I won't date this section or call out companies specifically, but there were multiple companies that had pledged financial assistance for the event that did not follow through. Due to this mishap the afterparty, which had been planned to happen at a separate venue, had to be pared down to a pizza party. It's not the end of the world, but heads up folks, if you promise something you should follow through to the best of your ability.

Planning the Afterparty

As stated above, we had some sponsor ruckus that made planning a bit difficult. Without a reliable budget, we couldn't secure a location for our afterparty, nor could we create event-specific merch. Even the most affordable tees were quite hefty in price, and by the time I was able to pull the trigger on an afterparty location the ones in the area were booked. I ended up pivoting to a pizza party at the event space, this did limit drink options as it is an alcohol-free property. There are of course worse things, but as a planner be prepared for the worst and anything in between will be manageable.

The Week Before

Once the mentors were all locked in I created some cool marketing pages with Canva , which is an awesome tool designed specifically for this type of work. I posted those on LinkedIn and tagged all the relevant mentors and their corresponding companies, along with the event space itself. I also took the schedule I had created and gussied it up in Canva and posted it around the event space a week before the event to encourage last-minute sign-ups. I emailed all the mentors/moderators with a light outline of expectations and wishes. Often participants do not reach out to mentors and struggle on their own, so I made sure the mentors knew they needed to sit with their teams as much as possible, engage directly, and not expect someone to come to them on their own. I sent out a dietary requirement form for the participants and the mentors. We had agreed to sponsor a meal a day and snacks for the event, and I wanted to make sure the meal worked for everyone. Once I had the results back from the form I sent an overview and meal count to the restaurant who did our meals. This was extra helpful because it ensured the restaurant was prepared for the correct amount of meals and reconfirmed that they were prepared for the event itself. I went to the store during my weekly office day to pick up the non-perishable snacks for the event and sent a list to my colleague for the perishable items. I do not have a car, so bringing the snacks myself would have been very difficult. My colleague has a car and can bring them with ease. I sent him a grocery list of what was needed and considered the task complete. I met with the event space to discuss the needs for the event, the desire to record the opening remarks, and a giant whiteboard. They requested a thumbnail for the YouTube video, which I did incorrectly the first round as I was unaware that I did not know what a YouTube thumbnail is. Luckily Canva knew and I created one with the proper dimensions in half an hour and sent it over the friday before the event. There is nothing left to prepare, now all I must do is wait for Monday.

This is not a sponsored post, I just love Canva.