Claire Dunn is a digital producer at Spredfast, helping organizations build meaningful relationships with their audiences through social media engagement. She helped conceptualize and develop the first ATX Hack for Change event and then served as lead organizer in the hackathon’s second year. Dunn has spent more than seven years in the tech and higher education industries and has worked for top universities in both the U.S. and the U.K. In her session, Dunn will discuss how to hack the traditional hackathon model into a new model focused on fostering social and civic good.
Q: What is the focus of your panel?
A: “Hacking the Hackathon for the Social & Civic Good” is an exploration of my experiences and the larger trend where the traditional hackathon model and the traditional hacker are moving away from the consumer-brand-driven, up-all-night, prize-money-oriented model—which is really how hackathons started—to a more civic- and community-focused volunteer-style event. So, people are more impact-motivated rather than prize-money motivated.
I’ll be talking about the evolution—but more importantly, we’ll be looking at how the initial model of the hackathon can be hacked and taken apart to produce these weekends that can really benefit local communities.
Q: There has, traditionally, been a negative connotation attached to the word “hacker.” How do we get away from that? What would you like the definition of “hacker” to be?
A: I think the mission in terms of transforming that is to take away the notion that things are hacked into and rebuild that with the idea that things are hacked together. We’re hacking together different people’s ideas and skill sets and data and needs—hacking together different pieces of the community.
Then, we can also look at it from the point of view that anybody can be a hacker. It’s not just the hardcore code enthusiasts or dark-room techies, but it’s also someone who’s a really passionate writer or a project manager. Projects that we have in the hackathons require people with many different skill sets. It’s not just a designer and a developer, it’s also someone who’s really good at working with data and someone who’s excellent at testing something out—they need people testing and using the solutions as much as they need people building them.
So, I think that’s the other big step: redefining hacking as a verb and opening up the definition of hacker as a person.
Q: What is your experience with hackathons? How did you get involved?
A: In my previous job with the IT department at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, we were approached by NASA’s International Space Apps Challenge—which is part of a NASA program that encourages learning about new technologies and applying them to problem sets focused on space exploration and other things that NASA deals with. Right around that time, in January 2013, the White House announced the National Day of Civic Hacking. It was the first-ever event like this and was in conjunction with President Obama’s open-data initiative and the release of data.gov. When the National Day of Civic Hacking was announced, NASA Space Apps reached out to various groups and organizations to potentially host the first National Day of Civic Hacking event in various cities. St. Edward’s University was approached, and we hosted the first one in Austin and partnered with Open Austin, which is part of the Code for America Brigade.
Q: Why are social/civic good hackathons important? Why should people do them?
A: From the hacker side, it’s a rewarding experience in and of itself. For so many digital creatives and technologists, it’s a passion that they develop into a skill set that they develop into a career. But that career likely isn’t as fulfilling day to day as the initial passion that got them into it. So, there’s this drive to build something cool. And then there’s this need to build something cool that actually gets used. And I think hackathons, traditionally, have really capitalized on that build-something-cool urge, but this new model—let’s build something that somebody needs to get put into use by Monday morning at this nonprofit—that’s a great feeling. That drive is what’s really turned people up at our events.
As far as organizers, it’s a lot of work to put these things together. But it’s important that we do this, because there’s nothing else really like this—where people can, in an organized fashion, give back with their brains and their passion skill sets. These events are so important because there are folks who might not ever have these things created for their nonprofits. Or there are data sets that are open from the government that people might not ever see or might not be able to understand if we don’t bring people together in a way that they can organize and get access to them.
And then for the participating organizations, the city of Austin has been amazing at supporting the work of civic hacking. And there are a lot of great tools that have grown out of the partnership that the city of Austin has with Open Austin, the Code for America Brigade—but we can never stop innovating. The fact that the city of Austin, just last year, instated an office of innovation and a chief innovation officer I think really speaks to the level of priority that this type of work and this kind of petri dish of technological creativity has the potential to raise.
Q: What are some of the standout projects produced through the hackathons you’ve organized?
A: The big “spotlight” project happened the first year and was actually recognized by the White House for their Champions of Change initiative. The project that got us there was based around Keep Austin Fed, which is a food-rescue organization. The passionate founder of Keep Austin Fed used to have a system that was basically just a piece of paper. When food kitchens had excess food at the end of the day, they would contact him, and he would then call volunteers to go pick up the food and take it to a shelter or various organizations that could receive the food donation and give it to hungry people in need. So, he was managing this whole process with a piece of paper and his cellphone—and he may have also had a Facebook page, but that was it.
But by the end of the weekend, he had a fully functioning website and database. They had a whole back end set up to manage volunteers and to use text messaging to communicate about new food-rescue opportunities. Specifically, they brought that food-rescue organization into the modern technology scene. And as a result, the organization saw volunteer numbers soar, and it really expanded their ability to perform their work.
Q: Why present this session at SXSWi?
A: I think SXSW is absolutely the right venue because, for one, they’ve proven themselves to be innovators and hackathon friendly. But also, at its heart, I feel like SXSW is an expression of innovation, and Austin is very much a beating heart for that. Given Austin’s high density of nonprofit organizations, civic interest, open data, and technologists, this really beautifully sews everything together in a way that I think SXSW also echoes strongly. They are cutting edge in terms of new ideas and reinventing things, and my “Hacking the Hackathon for the Social & Civic Good” is definitely a reinvention. I’m delighted to have the opportunity to showcase these ideas at what’s globally known to be a hub of great new ideas and the direction for the future.
When, Where & More:
Sunday, March 15
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Austin Convention Center
Room 6AB
500 E. Cesar Chavez St.
More information on Dunn and her upcoming panel can be found here: http://schedule.sxsw.com/2015/events/event_IAP32829.