Gillian Colan-O’Leary is gearing up for #HackTheHub this weekend. She’s expecting around 150 people to turn up at the hackathon she’s co-organising in the S13 venue on Boucher Road.
The old DIY warehouse now has a deconstructed look with shipping containers and riveted walls dividing up the huge space, and giant blow heaters overcoming any coolness.
“This is the fourth one. The other times it was really a side project that we were doing in our spare time, but now we’re set up as a proper company and giving it our all.”
#HackTheHub grew out of her involvement with Women Who Code when she realized that there was an appetite for bigger and longer events at which people could get a taste for new technologies and pick up new skills and contacts. Their mission statement is to “drive innovation utilising open collaboration to upskill the best technical talent and connect them with companies that will enable them to make change happen.”
“From an employer’s point of view, the people who go to hackathons are often the best tech talent. They’re people who are really passionate about software development and tech because they’re giving up a weekend to hack and learn. It’s difficult to get that sort of mindset across on a CV and sometimes software developers are not the best salespeople when it comes to selling themselves, but a future employer can see them completely in their element in the hackathon environment.”
#HackTheHub is spread over two days, but shies away from marathon coding through the night sessions. A pre-hack event allows the participants to introduce the challenges and run through the event format and its code of conduct.
“It means we have more time on the first morning to really just get down to business. At last year's pre-hack, one of the winning teams all met each other at the pre-hack and started talking. It’s a way to meet people, find out what’s it’s about, and then on the Saturday morning when you turn up for the first 12 hour day of the hackathon, you’re not overawed and you’re not worried about going in. It's a bit of a soft landing.”
The reduced hours also make the hackathon more friendly to people with family responsibilities who can’t stay away overnight. Around a third of participants at #HackTheHub are women, bucking the industry norm. “We’ve really worked hard to make sure that it’s a welcoming and diverse environment” says Gillian.
“You’re hacking, but you’re also upskilling. We really want to let people come along and nearly have little mini educational sessions at it. We don’t expect everyone to come along and be an Artificial Intelligence or a Machine Learning expert because they’re such new areas.”
There will be cash prizes for winning teams, spot prizes that everyone has a chance of winning, and an opportunity to learn and network and enjoy being steeped in technology for a couple of days.
The sponsoring companies and organisations set challenges. This weekend Bazaarvoice, Rapid7, Belfast City Council are the challenge setters. Overall themes of AI and Machine Learning will be supported by workshops, including one on chatbots for instance.
“A lot of hackathons focus on one specific problem. While we have challenges set by the sponsors, people can come up with their own ideas, as long as they match up with the broad theme.”
A previous #HackTheHub looked at Smart Cities and the Internet of Things, picking up challenges around health, racism, waste and mobility echoing Belfast City Council’s Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI). Funding and mentorship was available to keep working on projects beyond the end of the hackathon.
“One project was about waste and how we could encourage people to recycle in the home. Participants came up with ideas, like asking an Echo Dot ‘What day is brown bin day?’ and ‘Can I put bones in my brown bin?’.”
Practical solutions for real challenges and problems faced by the council.
Another previous project supporting NEETS (Not in Education, Employment or Training) with an app that could help translate non-traditional skills (for example, volunteering at a boxing club) into capabilities that could be listed on a CV, and connect people with training opportunities is still in development, supported by the Department for Communities.
Gillian senses a strong appetite for more events, though scaling up to more than hackathon a year is a challenge.
“We never envisaged getting to this stage. Both sponsors and hackers come back to us and ask is there another one? But to do this properly takes a lot of time, commitment and planning. We need to balance the demand with being able to do it absolutely brilliantly.
“And a lot of our attendees are in their final year at university, or going on to a Master’s, so we have to keep exam season in mind.”
The team learn more about the needs of the hackers and the sponsors each time they run another #HackTheHub. Gillian knows that “a big part of the hackathon is getting people the right support, mentorship and training” and she is delighted that Invest NI are involved as a partner and can help to keep ideas alive beyond the end of the event.
Gillian’s background is in marketing rather than software engineering, mostly working in Belfast’s ICT sector. But she knows that it is an exciting industry, with lots of career opportunities.
“If you’re good at what you do, and you work hard you’ll really get on. In tech there are always so many opportunities opening up. It’s always changing. There’s always a buzz around a certain area: for a while it was Internet of Things, now the technology that occupies the peak position of Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies is Machine Learning”
And a hackathon like #HackTheHub is a great place to keep learning and upskilling.
