My background in hackathons
My first real hackathon I can remember was during my PhD times, SpaceApps 2014 in Auckland, New Zealand at AUT University. I was intrigued by the hackathon concept, but never felt “up to it”. Then early 2016 there was a very exciting opportunity coming up, which really intersected with my field of interest, geoscience Data management and extracting and presenting actionable information. It was framed as a business to govt (B2G) data innovation challenge, sponsored by the New Zealand government. This so called R9 Accelerator was meant to bring the public and private sectors together to make it easier for business to interact with New Zealand government. I actually wrote a blog post in more detail about the event from my perspective back then. Reading it today brings a lot of excitement back.
Now, I am in Estonia since 2017 and I felt it would be a valuable event format to engage out students into the field of geoinformatics and applied problem solving with geographic and earth observation data. Together with our team at the Department of Geography we organized the NASA Space Apps hackathons in 2018 (Tartu) and later 2019 (Tartu).
I had the honour to be invited as a mentor for Europe-centered space-related hackathons. I see it as an acknowledgement and as an exciting opportunity. My first invitation was to the SpaceTech 2019 at the Tartu Observatory in Tõravere, Estonia. That is close to Tartu, and the Tartu Observatory was on the way to become an independent institute under the University of Tartu. I even gave a a few talks on pre-events to inform potential attendees about domain background in geoscience and earth observation data (here and here) Garage48 was organizing the event, usually with partners and sponsors, including one or more European Space Agency (ESA) Business Incubation Centre (ESA BIC) branches. They have a lot of experience in managing such events and they have a great team with a lot of of contagious enthusiasm. During 2019 were the last live (in-person) hackathons I have participated in, be it as a mentor or hacker.
Some observations on hackathons
With the advent of COVID-19 the hackathons went virtual like everything else. The first one I joined as a mentor was ActInSpace, where I was invited by the Estonian ESA BIC. “ActInSpace is a two-day international innovation contest (aka hackathon) where teams of people from all different backgrounds work together to solve real-life challenges and invent new space solutions together” (Airbus website). ActInSpace is organised by ESA and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales) and is also sponsored by Airbus.
The second hackathon was the recent SPACETECH EUROPE 2021 Online Hackathon which was “funded by the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv and co-founded by SpaceON and Garage48”. Now I am actually not sure if “co-founded” or “co-funded” … I should have read that maybe more thoroughly? Is it basically a Ukrainian hackathon aiming for the Europe market? Anyhow, the whole point of this article was to try framing my thoughts on the somewhat disappointing outputs of many of these hackathons. But we need to put this into perspective, though.
Comparing these ,let me called them “off-the-shelf hackathons”, with the NASA Space Apps brand and with my experience from the government-sponsored R9 Accelerator hackathon, there are some interesting details. There we have comparatively well articulated challenges. The government hackathon had seconded their own expert staff to teams for each of the sponsored challenges that they wanted solutions for. Similarly, NASA SpaceApps provides a host of materials for their challenges.
Who is getting what out of those events? ActInSpace describes the goals as follows: “In a mindset of positive competition, the teams must race against the clock and go as far as possible to design, prototype and deliver concrete results - all before presenting to a distinguished panel of experts.” In a way this statement brings it out in the least sugar-coated and most direct form, the bare transaction.
In my opinion many of the attendees have some background in general coding, technology, but it often looks like there is a lack of actual knowledge in the particular domain. Of course, that is where the mentors come in to provide guidance on what could work and what not, from a technical, scientific and business point of view. And the lead mentors are all marketing, project management, goal-oriented. The outcome of most hackathons is a product or service idea coated in graphical mockup and the related business feasibility research gathered over the course of roughly 48 hours without sleep, presented in a final 3 minute pitch.
With a lot of marketing and hype and positive vibes via online marketing channels and social media networks participants are attracted to attend. Is that because the more focused actors would do it anyway independent of a hackathon? What is the greater picture? Gig economy style mass produce ideas, concepts and business cases at low cost, hoping for the occasional gem that actually makes something compelling, with the main prices being incubation to funnel them into potential companies - transform raw materials into fast scaling fast failing startups and to keep the interest in that target sector active and in the minds of talented but unfocused wanna-be entrepreneurs. I guess it makes sense.
Another example of start-up company generation could be Entrepreneur First. They approached me during my PhD time in New Zealand and I had a very interesting, very nice interview with them. That was handpicking potential team members of co-founders for their incubator batches. A very different approach, but with the clear goal (and track record) of generating strong start-up teams and business ideas. Most hackathon (winning) teams I have heard of who make it into incubators don’t make it through successful. Eventually, their business idea, their founder mentality or skills/talent (or the lack of those) will let them down.
Mentor roles
But one last thing bugs me though, mentoring: Most, if not all of the mentors are typically not paid and volunteer during these weekends. That reminds a bit of the scientific peer-review model, where the big publishing companies use experts to judge the quality of a resource, without paying the reviewer, and without risk if the proposed resource is of low quality. From a business model it makes perfect sense. But from an ethical or sustainability point of view it doesn’t feel right.
What is in it for mentors at a hackathon? For a person to be approached and asked to join as a mentor is an acknowledgement to being recognized as a nexpert in a certain field. Of course this speaks to the ego. One American put it as follows, “We’re not here for shits and giggles, we want something out of it, pick talent from the market.”, and another more invester-type mentor stated “I am actually for the fun, and I am just interested to see where things go.” I think, that gives a very good picture. The invester likes to sit and wait to see where a potential resource might be worth investing, and others want the access to the talent pool.
But there are often some sort of sobering episodes, teams not taking advice, teams mostly developing ideas, whereas most experts are getting interested in seeing at least examples. Then the teams might or might not win, but what happens then? The teams might join an incubator or accelerator, and many don’t go anywhere. I somehow don’t quite arrive at a satisfying conclusion for this article, I might be more aware of the aspects surrounding hackathons and their organisation and the intended outcomes.