 Hello everyone, I'm going to talk to you about hackathons, makeathons, and mapathons, and other kind of thons for humanitarian innovation, about best practices and lessons learned from people that I've interviewed and made a survey with. Why I'm talking about hackathons and makeathons, because this is one of the mechanisms in which humanitarian organizations like MSF and others can involve the broader society, the universities, the institutes, companies to help solve these operational challenges that we have. I don't know how many in here in the online audience who have done or participated in any makeathons or hackathons maybe show hands quite a lot, and I bet that most of you have heard about it. And since this is kind of a study of perspectives of people that I talked to, the online audience and everyone here, I'm happy to hear your perspectives on how you think these things work and what you can do to make them better. So please write online if you have comments on this. So what is the hackathon or makeathon or mapathon? I mean like a marathon, you know that suffix the thon. It's about something that goes on for, you know, you have some time limit and you're supposed to reach the goal. And that goal could be like a deeper understanding of things. It could be, you know, you want to prototype, you want to throw some ideas around, you want to build a network. The kind of expectations on these thons are very different, but normally you would use them as tools to accelerate humanitarian innovation. So basically doing something, let's say a lot quicker and also involving people that might take a long time to involve if you go through traditional channels and products and so on. What it usually involves is a crowd, so it could be, well the crowd could be anything from, you know, 10 people involved and 200s of people. I personally have been involved with a makeathon, which were 700 people in one day. It was quite big. You normally have a challenge or you should have a common challenge, so something that you want to address or solve. Then you have constraints. So you have 24 or 72 hours to work on this problem. And you're all in this kind of room and you might have access to some technologies or tools and you might not have access to others. There might be constraints in terms of, you know, you can spend this much money, the solution has to be this cheap or whatever. You have coaching, so you have normally a process that you follow. You have facilitators and coaches that help you through this process. You have tools and methods to help you run the thon in an effective way. And that's like a template for creative collaboration, at least in theory. So why did this study, because there is still some doubts about the usefulness and the impact of these kind of thons. So I bet that there's a lot of different experiences in the room and in the online audience as well. So it depends on what you expect from a thon. I mean, do you expect to get a final solution that you can deploy in the field? Do you expect to build a network or a community? Do you expect to get access to expertise from outside? Or do you expect prototypes or new ideas? It differs a lot. So we wanted to know more about what are the key success factors when you do these make-a-thons and hack-a-thons. What should you think about in order to get good events? And what are some common pitfalls and how can you address these? So I did an online survey with 15 respondents and also did online interviews with 13 interviewees. The focus was to get their perspectives on key outcomes. What do they expect and what do they get out of these thons? What did they consider to be the success factors? What enabled them to get the outcomes they wanted to achieve? And some maybe hard-earned lessons. So you bump into some difficulties and maybe you would do things differently the next time. So I wanted to know that as well. And I applied the ethics framework for innovation to identify and mitigate potential harms in this study. So these are the participants. So anything from the Tom Global Group, the port, humanitarian makers, field-ready, USAID, also within MSF obviously we wanted to get an outside perspective as well. Also from companies like Ericsson, that's where, for example, I had an experience of doing the make-a-thon with 700 people. So they had a technology for good day where the expectation was not to implement things in the field, so to speak, but to get the staff involved in humanitarian issues and try to crowdsource new ideas and so on. So some of the benefits that the participants reported on. Well, time-boxing, creativity and co-creation is really important because there's a saying that creativity loves constraints. So if everything is possible and you have infinite amount of time, it's very easy to like, yeah, I don't know how to do this, I don't know where to start. But if you say like you have 24 hours to do this and we put you in a room with a lot of smart people, there's an expectation that you act and that you do something. So that kind of time-boxing and doing that kind of sprint is really, really important. Another important point is that you challenge assumptions and mindsets because we assume quite a lot of things in our everyday work. So we think that people think like we do and that they have the same experiences. But when you have this diverse crowd, people from universities, the institutes, people of different age and gender and different backgrounds, you really see that, okay, we didn't really think alike and there's quite a lot of things that we assumed that weren't correct. One fundamental benefit is that you gain a deep understanding of needs because it's very difficult even if you bring in a lot of people from the outside and they have no clue about MSF or any other organization and what you're facing in operations. How could they come with a solution? And sometimes the people that know most about the needs are not always equipped to come with a solution. So that's why we need to really understand the needs. Another thing is generating a wide range of new ideas. So obviously in an ideation process creativity, it's about getting a lot of ideas. Some of them are really crazy and nuts even, but that's the point as well. You want to have something that triggers the imagination of other people. So something that I think that's completely ridiculous. Somebody else can take that and transform that into a workable idea in the end. Also we want to accelerate prototype building and testing. So it takes us from these posted notes and conversations into building prototypes. And if we build prototypes, we can test those and then we can get feedback from that. So it accelerates learning. This point with moving from thinking to doing, I think it's really, really strong. Because I think everyone has been involved in conversations, discussions, creative sessions, workshops. You know, this is really nice. This is really good. But then when you move out of that, it's just, yeah, you go back to your normal day and your normal working, you don't really act on it. Because it was a fun creative session, but there's no action afterwards. And when you move from thinking to doing, you're actually starting that and starting to push that ball forward and actually creating momentum. You can also raise awareness of important issues. You don't have to perhaps get a final solution in the end. But you might get people in board of society and institutes and universities to get aware of the challenges that you're facing. And they might have solutions. They might have networks or expertise that you need. But not always about the solution. And when you establish that shared sense of urgency, when people see that there is a need and we know where we are, we know where we want to go, then it's quite difficult to walk out of that workshop or event or a thon and say, I'm not going to do anything about it. So when you have established this, people are really eager to contribute and act on it. Another important part is forging external relationships. Because when you've found out that this is what we want to do, you usually find out that we can't do this on our own. We see it in the work we do in MSF that we need to find partnerships and relationships with outside partners in order to create these solutions. And that's how these makeathons and hackathons and thons can help us because we can invite people around this common cause. And even deeper than that, forming sustainable communities of people that are ready to help. So whenever you call on them, they are ready to lend you a helping hand or ask around in their networks. Is there anybody that can help us to solve these issues? So it's not only about the solution but also the relationships and communities we form while doing these things. I didn't look at the time. How am I doing on time? A few minutes. That's good. Classic. Strong commitment from leadership is really, really important because it's not only about committing to 24 or 48 hours. You need to commit to the planning, the careful planning in the beginning and the follow up. What do we do with these results afterwards? Also it needs careful scoping. You can't come and say, code for 24 hours, do what you want. It doesn't really work. You need to really carefully plan and scope this process. And proactive facilitation and coaching. It doesn't solve itself if you just throw smart people in the room because some might come off track and you need to help them up and some are afraid to push the boundaries and they are in the comfort zones. You need to push them out of the comfort zone. You need to document process and outcomes so somebody might pick up on this. It might not be the same team. Somebody else needs to pick up on it. If you don't have the process and outcomes documented, it's not going to work. And current diversity in all kinds is super important because consensus and having people that think alike is not good for creativity. Having subject matters on site is one of the most important things because it's not only having the subject from the beginning but actually having people involved in giving feedback to prototypes and such. That's really crucial. The final parts. You need to avoid one and done. You need to understand that this is not about the workshop, it's about how you continue and get the support to continue working this. It's iterative. It's not only about one solution but how you develop that further and have feedback loops. The paralysis of unlimited opportunity is the scoping. You cannot come with a blank sheet of paper because people will feel paralyzed almost. You need a strong scope. You can have cool gadgets in your workshops but if you put a drone there or VR glasses, they're going to use it. So be careful because sometimes they just okay, let's use these VR glasses for anything. So sometimes you want to use it to spur imagination, sometimes not. Conclusion. Negotiate expectations. Involve need knowers throughout the process. Secure ownership of outcomes. Post event. Careful planning and facilitation. I want to thank obviously everyone that participated in the study and the editorial committee of MSF Scientific Days who helped out with contacts. And that's it. Thank you very much. Any questions of clarity for Andreas? No. Sara. Sara, Venice, Manson, UK. You mentioned when the important thing was getting a deep understanding of needs. I wondered if that also involved getting a deep understanding of what was already out there and how this might fit into the overall cycle. I think that's one of the problems. Let's solve X in a thon. Then you bring in people and you think like you know the challenge. But then if you come with a solution, let's throw a drone in there and do something. No, you're not even allowed to have drones in this country or bring them to the country. It's going to die. The same thing with if you don't know what's out in terms of available technology, then you might create something that's already existing. And it's very difficult to do that in 24 hours. You might need to do preparation work to understand what's benchmark technologies and look at tech and that kind of stuff. So it's very important that you prepare before so you just don't go into the room and let's create something new with these cool gadgets. Textning och gråter www.btistudios.com