Switzerland just kicked off its largest AI movement to date — all about turning world-class research into real-world impact. Over 55 organizations – including the Federal Government, EPFL AI Center, ETH AI Center, Gebert Rüf Stiftung, Swiss Re, Swisscom, and UBS – are joining forces to shape the future of trustworthy AI made in Switzerland.
From 1 Sept to 5 Oct, the latest Swiss AI developments will come to life in events and hackathons across the country:
AI Talks, Conferences, Workshops & Online Courses in 10+ cities from Basel, Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, and Lucerne to Lugano, Lenzburg, St. Gallen, Winterthur, and Zurich
Hackathons in 7 cities
AI Challenges from leading organisations in healthcare, government, finance, industry & more
Incubation programs for Hackathon winners
Kudos on the idea, and for reaching out here! I build open source tools for hackathons, something I posted about here a few days ago. Your question is a great one, because small private events are not really addressed well by the typical guidance for large (100+) event organizers. Let me (with a little help from my fine-tuned assistant) give it a try:
Do: communicate the objectives and rules clearly (e.g. Gantt chart the timeline), encourage a diverse mix (friends and family, also to boost the audience), provide necessary resources for ideation (from high quality moderation kits to healthy snacks and water), allocate time for brainstorming, pitching, voting, and development stages, and ensure there are mentors available (at least people with some prior hackathon experience) to guide the teams. Think about some creative team-building activities.
Don't: overload participants with too many rules, micromanage the teams, celebrate individual achievements over ensuring all participants get something out of it, or make the hackathon too competitive.
In summary: focus on learning, collaboration, and having fun while documenting the process and outcomes for future reference. Especially for that last point, feel free to test Dribdat in our sandbox, or ping me if you want something more robust & private.
Thanks to the Hack the Hackathon conference for prompting me to finally post about this here. In particular, it was the discussion with the "Hackathon Template" team that reminded me of humble beginnings and prompted me to share more. You can see a Dribdat site with links to the event here: https://hackthackathon.dribdat.cc/
A language that changed the lives of millions of people - myself included - who couldn't go to learn C or Pascal in grad school just to get started with coding. I imagine that modern alt-tech culture from hackspaces to hackathons - owes much to you as well. Also, I am heartened to learn that one of the first precursors of BASIC was DOPE.
When I am forced to use a phone or tablet of a brand and size I'm not used to, everything seems wonky and out of place. Yet I can adapt to a different brand and size of car in a few minutes. Replacing tactile memory with skeuomorphism, is like a prosthetic arm that can extend 10m to replace your sickly feely biological one. I'm always up for advocating for more arts & crafts as part of interaction design.
