 Yeah, okay, cool. So it's fun to be here. My name is Caroline Arkinson and I'm working as an Android developer at Spotify in Stockholm. And today I'm going to talk about how we created a hackathon with 50-50 female and male participants and how we learned to make a hackathon for a tech event for everyone. And I want you guys, you people to get the tips and tricks and inspiration to make even better tech events for all the cool people out there who want to hack and learn. So back to the start. When I started working at Spotify two years ago, I was still a student and I was working with student relations between Spotify and tech universities. And me and my colleagues, we were going to make an event for students all over Sweden and we were reflecting on why are there so few female students attending our events. Because it's not like they don't exist, we just didn't manage to reach out to them. So we started thinking, okay, how can we approach this? How can we learn how to reach out to all students out there? So we decided we were going to make an amazing event. We were going to force a 50-50 gender division between the female and male. We also wanted to reach out to first-time hackathons because there are a lot of students out there who learn how to code while they're at the university but maybe don't attend that many tech events because they're a bit scared or intimidated. And we wanted to say that this is a great event for you guys. And we also wanted to promote the nice side of the tech world, like the inspirational, learning, warm part of the tech world and not just that you would be sitting in a basement or that kind of view. We wanted to take that part away from it. So we decided to make diversify with our motto, think it, build it, ship it, show it. So this was going to be not just a regular hackathon, it was going to be the hackathon focusing on creativity and learning and building something that you can show for others. So this is what we decided to do. For the teams, we decided that we wanted to have 40 participants because that's quite a big crowd but it's still not too many. So you can still socialize with the people in the room. And we split it up into 10 teams, so four people in each team. Each team was going to be 50-50 female male and also cross-functional. So when they applied, they got to specify what they wanted to do and we didn't want a team to get stuck because they were only like back and developers but they wanted design and no one wanted to do the design or something like that. So every team had each skill set. They were also coached by Spotify employees. So since these are our participants were students, there are a lot of things that they don't know maybe because they haven't been hacking or designing that much and we didn't want them to get stuck. We wanted them to get help, to really feel like they could produce and learn something during these two days. And a bit about the format of the hackathon, how we like to schedule and how we set it up. So the purpose of the first pie was not to win. We thought that everyone who was there were already a winner because they made it through our screening process and they were like no fancy prizes or anything. So we removed the competitive part to instead promote that you're supposed to talk to each other and show what you built but also if you're very new to programming or going to hackathons, the first thing that you, the first event that you go to shouldn't be all about like okay, well, I'm new and I'm nervous and this guy is so much better than me or that girl has been doing this for so many years and then it's just a competition and you lose and that's not very fun. So no prizes, focusing on creating. We also decided to remove pitches. We didn't want our participants to spend their time on making a slide deck or making an ugly hack to get that one button that they're going to show in the presentation to work but it actually doesn't work at all. So we wanted them to focus on building the product. So no pitches, but we had like a demo station instead. So each team had a table and you could go there and you could play around with what they built and you could ask questions and like maybe go look into the code if you wanted to. Oh, that's a neat solution. So more actually focus on the product and what they built and what they learned and not just doing two-minute slideshow deck because I mean obviously how fun is it? Not that much. You don't get that much understanding of the product that they built. We also at Spotify believe very much in knowledge sharing. So we had in the schedule, we put in like micro presentations every now and then just like pass the microphone format. Each team got to say, okay, we've been working on this. This is our challenge right now. This button is not working. So we're trying to figure that out. So that every team that was there could also know like, oh, but there, those people over there are building this cool collaborative playlist app and they are doing a travel music app. That's fun. So everyone knew what the other ones were building. And that's so much more fun than someone just sitting in the corner like, no, this is my stuff. You're not allowed to see it. So we had that to promote knowledge sharing. We also didn't want our hackathon participants to just sit and like code until their eyes were bleeding or like really just focused into your computer because when you're working with this, your brain kind of needs a rest every now and then. So we had two external speakers joining us. Christine Heelman from Microsoft and Heidi Harman, UX researcher from Lookback and co-founder of Geeker Meetup. They were both there and gave a talk on their view on diversity and also promoting like discussion and talk to the students. What do you guys think about gender diversity and how can we approach it? Because it was, after all, a diversity focused event and we wanted that to show as well through the schedule and not just being it like some kind of facade and then people just coding, but we actually wanted a diversity approach of it to show. We also had a workshop. So this is Judith Schneider who works at Spotify who made a workshop for them. So they were sitting like in a team of four. They were playing a card game. Then the team would split up and go work with another team and do the card game with them. But the new people they were playing with had another set of rules than they had which they didn't know. So it was about meeting someone who plays with the other rules of the game and handling miscommunication and instead of thinking, okay, this person is stupid, actually trying to figure out, okay, what's going on here. Also another way to have them talk to people from other teams and having a good conversation and thinking. And the next thing that we also did which I think is very important is sleep. So when I'm tired, I don't work well at all. Something that might take me five minutes to solve when I'm rested might take me an hour to solve when I'm really tired. And I don't like working at 2 a.m. in the night because then I'm just tired and I don't feel well. So I didn't want to promote that behavior amongst my Hackathon participants. And I wanted them to go home and get some rest. So we actually closed in the evening and we said, okay, now you have to go home and sleep for a few hours. We open again at 9 a.m. tomorrow. Welcome to go back for breakfast. Because now how fun is it to go to an event and then on Monday morning you're super tired because you didn't sleep at all or things like that. So sleep is always good. Always go and sleep when you're tired. So we had to do some work before the event, of course, as well, because we wanted to reach out to our participants. So this is a bit how we approached marketing and applications and screening. We worked with a company called Confetti to make a sign up site. And we had a lot of information there and really tried to make it clear that, okay, we believe that diverse teams create the best products at Spotify. We're really trying to work for inclusiveness and openness and put a lot of effort into this is not about winning. This is for you to learn. This weekend is all about you having fun and enjoying tech and getting a nice product that you can show. And really bounce back and forth a lot. How should we write the text properly? We also, in the application, we had our participants answering a few questions because we wanted to make sure that we were reaching out to the right kind of people for this event and for Spotify. So we wanted people who are fun, have a good team player, you know, a good heart and there to learn. So we asked them, first of all, why do you want to be a part of Diversify? Just to see, like, okay, what's in it for you? We also asked them, like, what area would you like to develop further skill scenes? Do you want to become a better programmer? Do you want to learn web development? Do you want to get ideas on design tools or whatever? We also asked them, what can you contribute with? Because we needed this so we were setting up the teams, right? If they were like, oh, I really, really, really want to design, then we were like, okay, that's a designer person. Then you could make sure that we had enough designers for each team. And then also, what is standard diversity to you? Why is it important? Because this was a diversity focused event and we wanted people to actually find this an important matter. And not just come and see our offices at Spotify. I think we did pretty well with our outreach. We had, from our applications, 43% female applicants and 57% male. We never had that many female students applying to NRA events before. So that was a good win for us. We managed to reach out to a lot of female students, a lot of first-time hackathoners. So, yay. Other good things when you're organizing hackathons. Okay. Food. Food is really important for energy and happiness. A lot of tech events out there, they serve pizza and beer. And not everyone likes pizza and beer. Me, for example, I'm gluten intolerant. I can't even eat pizza or drink beer. And when I went to a tech event earlier this year, I got potato chips for breakfast. That's not a great start of my day. So we did have pizza and beer because some people like that. But we also made sure to have salads and sodas and maybe cider or donuts for those who want donuts, but also apples and carrot sticks or croissants. Like really making sure that everyone, there was something for everyone to eat. You shouldn't have to go hungry. Your brain needs fuel when you're working on things. That's really important. Another nice thing, like a nice touch, that we had is soundtrack your hack. In the applications, we let people fill in what song are you and why. Because it's a pretty fun way to get to know someone and see what different songs people choose and how they explain themselves with this song. So before the hackathon, we made a playlist with all the 40 participants. And we were like, hey, this is all of you. This is a fun way for you to get to know each other and get a bit excited about the hack beforehand. And then during the hackathon, we opened up the playlist. So we made it collaborative. So everyone could add the music they wanted to listen to. Which means that there was always something that you would like that will be playing in the speakers. Because music is, you know, at least to me, very important. And it creates a very nice atmosphere. And this way, we could also make sure that, you know, if you at least just like one song in a playlist is going to play for you every now and then. So we evaluated this a bit afterwards. And we got some nice feedback. Like, first time I worked in a team as balanced as this one. You know, when they had both designers and back end and front end knowing people. And thought it was great to skip the competition part. Because the event felt really relaxed and people could mingle around and look at everyone's stuff. Which is great. It's really, you know, what we wanted to promote. And they really liked having a coach. And who's an employee and like, they said that it was awesome getting feedback from real people in the biz. Because as a student, it's pretty difficult to know what is it like to actually work as a developer or as a designer. But now they could get like the real tips and tricks. Someone said that this is a proof of concept of how good diversity is within the IT. Because they built really cool stuff. Like, I'm jealous of the products that they built during these two days. Someone said that it's the most inspiring weekend in a long time. I'm so happy that we managed to inspire people and make them feel like, wow, this is amazing. I want to continue doing this. And then there's this quote that I really love. Someone, when we asked them to explain your weekend in one sentence, one person said, adventures happen if you let them. So we made a tech event and this person saw this like a great adventure. And that's awesome. Okay. But now we're thinking, okay, cool, Caroline, but not everything can be as awesome as jumping into a pool out from a window. Right? No, that's true. There were some improvements we could do. So a few months later we made another hackathon that we called Unify, which was more about collaborating and working in a big team. So we put them up in teams of eight. And we did the same thing here, like application. We assembled a team for them, things like that. But we did some changes to improve this further. First of all, we didn't want to force the 50-50 gender split. We wanted to see, like, did we really learn something from diversify? Like in terms of marketing and information. And it turns out we did. We got a gender split, both in applications and for for the hackathon in 40% female and 60% male, which is great. I mean, the tech world isn't 50-50, but this is still pretty balanced compared to if we would have 10% female and 90% male. We also made the teams, like, platform-specific. Because while they did enjoy at diversify that they could say, I want to do design, or I want to do back end, or I want to do front end, some participants felt that, okay, I really wanted to do iOS development. But my team, they wanted to do web because they hadn't done iOS before. And this is a bit of a shame. So here, we also let the applicants say, like, okay, I want to do iOS, I want to do web, or I want to do Android. So we had, like, two web teams, we had one Android team and one iOS team. And that way, we made sure that if you like back end, you could do back end, but then you would also work on the platform that you want to work on. And then we also combined the demos that we had with presentations on stage first. Because even though the demo format was great, some participants felt that they had to repeat themselves over and over again. You know, I would show something to a person here, then I would explain this app, type in a city, and then you get the artist up there that's playing the next week. And then, you know, next person would come. And I would have to say the same thing over again. So instead, we had first, like, presentations on stage, just, like, show your product. This is what they learned. This is what we built. And then that way, everyone could see it once. And then you can go around and play at the demo stations. That was all I was going to say now. If you want to go ahead and look at what they built during these two hackathons, we have two showcase sites. They're called the, or diversify.github.io, or Spotify dash unify.github.io. Pretty cool. You can see what they built. If you want to reach out to me, I have an email address. It's arkasonnetspotify.com. You can also poke me on Twitter. It's Archie with a Y at the end. But please be aware they may contain traces of cat images in my Twitter feed. And apart from that, I'm going to hang around here if you want to come talk to me or discuss whatever. Thanks for listening and I hope you're having a great day.