I work as the coordinator of a health data project for the Chicago Department of Public Health. My team is going into our sixth week of work from home now, and Chicago as a whole is entering its fifth week of the shelter in place. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster, especially seeing how much the people and communities around me are being challenged to adapt in this time. Just a few weeks in to shelter in place, I started feeling restless and searching for ways to stay active and be helpful.
UNLEASH’s idea for a virtual global hackathon series came at the perfect time.
UNLEASH is a global innovation lab for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The lab normally brings together 1,000 youth leaders – in person – for the annual innovation lab (read about my experience at UNLEASH 2019 in Shenzhen last year here). In light of the Covid-19 crisis, UNLEASH decided to go virtual and organize 6 hacks spanning the globe. The theme was to address some of the challenges that societies, communities, and economies are facing given the spread and effects of the current global pandemic.
Having loved my experience with the UNLEASH community and innovation methodology as a participant in Shenzhen last year, I was hoping to contribute from the other side as an organizer this time. I had also just gone through the process of organizing the first interdisciplinary healthcare hackathon at Northwestern University, and I enjoyed it so much that I couldn’t wait to do it all over again.
Lucky for me, UNLEASH was looking for alumni to help organize the virtual hackathon series. Together with fellow alumni Sujala Balaji and Natalija Vojno in Canada, and Ali Sutherland in Peru, we put in our bid to be an organizing team.
It was a whirlwind from there. The timeline looked a little like this:
- Saturday March 21st – Submitted our bid to be an organizing team.
- Wednesday March 25th – Heard back that we would be leading the GMT-6 time zone hackathon.
- Thursday March 26th – Received a flood of applications from UNLEASH alumni volunteering to join as facilitators, experts, and participants. The GMT-6 applicants included alumni from all throughout the Americas, including from Canada, Mexico, Peru, Costa Rica, Brazil, Colombia, and the United States.
- Friday March 27th – Worked alongside the UNLEASH Secretariat and 5 other organizing teams to finalize the program, onboard facilitators and experts, assign participants to teams, and prepare all the virtual tools.
- Saturday March 28th – Before we knew it, it was Saturday morning and my organizing team and our facilitators were together in the virtual Zoom room, counting down as the clock hit 9:00am in GMT-6. Participants began popping up on our screens, and the two-day hackathon began. Connected remotely, the teams collaborated over Zoom for 8 hours each day, using Slack, Miro, and Google Slides to complete the immersive virtual innovation process.
Honestly, I was nervous to see how a virtual hackathon would play out. My organizing team and I had worked meticulously to prepare for everything we could imagine. But I was worried that it still wouldn’t be enough to replicate the energy of a room buzzing with in-person activity. In addition, we knew we would have technology challenges, and we did – dropped calls, internet connectivity issues, and navigating between the numerous Zoom rooms, Miro boards, Slack channels, and Google Drive links. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. The energy was amazing and we managed the technology issues well, including the Day 1 YouTube livestream, Day 2 Facebook livestream, final Airtable publication, and all the Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram activity in between. Talk about going virtual…
Fortunately, we had the greatest group of individuals that we could have asked for to pilot this virtual hackathon. The participants were positive, energetic, and adaptable. Our expert consultants were flexible and generous with their time. My fellow organizers and facilitators were proactive and incredible at finding time in our jam-packed schedule to bring us all together through grounding exercises, silly power pose challenges, and virtual high fives. And the UNLEASH Secretariat team worked tirelessly around the clock to support the organizing teams of each hackathon across the six different time zones.
The creativity, solidarity, and sense of urgency was a real throwback to our days at the Shenzhen innovation lab. And just like it is at every UNLEASH lab, it was incredible to witness the collaboration and progress that teams made in such a short amount of time, researching and prototyping various Covid-19 responses in just two days. I want to give a huge shout out to the GMT-6 teams who pitched on Sunday (AppBuelita, Breath Easy, and UnLock) along with our neighboring GMT-4 teams (adapter, Think Positive Today, Keep ‘Em Buzy, Global Medical Stock-Out Protocol, and PANDEMIC RESTORE). I have my fingers crossed for all the #UNLEASH4Covid participants carrying forward their ideas beyond the weekend event!
If I had to sum up how I felt coming out of this virtual hackathon in one word, I would say united. It was uplifting to see old UNLEASH friends, and meet new UNLEASH friends, all coming to this hackathon with a common goal. And although each of us is dealing with a different situation in our countries and our personal lives right now, we could all relate to the ways in which this pandemic has impacted our communities and driven us to do more. Despite being behind our screens and miles apart, it truly felt like we were together. I look forward to the next UNLEASH initiative that will bring us together again. Until then 🙂
-Alice Lu (MSL ’19)
