Idea: Global Awareness Hackathon to boost Awareness Campaigns project, jumpstart crowdsourcing

This is a copy of the original idea as first posted in the Humane Tech Community Awareness project.

Background

There is really a lot to do to get this project roaring ahead. Besides all the work that goes into setting up campaigns, produce video’s and other deliverables, we need to determine strategies, organize funding initiatives, rally more people to the cause, etc. etc.

On the forum we already have a campaign team of 11 members only 2 days after the Call for Participation was posted, so that is great. But we can speed this up by launching a campaign to bootstrap this project itself.

Furthermore, while we envision professional studio’s and actors to take part in creation of our promotion video’s, this requires great levels of organization and possibly comes with obligations (to sponsors, etc.), that I don’t think our community - until now mostly active on the community forum - can handle right now.

Also I am convinced that professional video’s can be produced at very low cost using crowdsourcing. Our community contains many experts in a broad range of fields, we all have networks, and there is a whole world of people out there that are worried about tech, that should be willing to participate in fun and value-adding projects.

Lastly, the previous point, and the fact that crowdsourcing really aligns with Humane Tech concepts - using the internet to bring people together and reach great creative heights - would be a great Proof of Concept for our community and community building in general.

The idea I want to discuss here, is to use our existing Meetup structure (20+ groups all around the world) and organize a global hackathon were we work on the Awareness Campaigns project.

Global Awareness Hackathon

This idea starts by creating a campaign in this project, and working on it like on any other campaign.

We will pick a proper date, a couple of months from now, and start preparing a hackathon event that involves most, if not all of our Meetup groups. The term ‘Hackathon’ is very common in tech realms, but increasingly also used in other fields, such as Marketing. During the hackathon - in our case happening on a single day - multiple teams cooperate on a variety of topics of their own choosing aligned to a common theme. In this case the theme is Humane Tech Awareness Campaigns,

Everything (and more) related to this project can be picked up by a team as topics at the hackathon:

  • Creating video’s, design artwork
  • Social media promotion campaigns
  • Elaborating strategies
  • Executing entire campaigns
  • Organize crowdfunding
  • Creating stories, scripts, etc.
  • Whatever teams can dream up (flash mobs, stunts, press events, art …)

Example:

One Meetup group could select to execute the Reality Shock campaign and produce the Memories of a Bartender video deliverable.

They spread posters and flyers throughout the city, that were designed by another group, and the community campaign team.

As people (members and non-members) sign up for the Hackathon, they get to choose team membership of their liking, and help with preparation (voluntarily, not required).
The Meetup group arranges one or more preparatory meetups to brainstorm for and assign tasks, so everything is ready when the Hackathon starts

They manage to find a proper location - an authentic pub with sufficient space - where the video can be shot, find participants that can bring video equipment. The video will be created during the hackathon, but in the afternoon, and everyone can be a figurant in the video. Members are asked to bring clothing, if they can, for the various time settings. The art academy in their city can also help with this, for free.

The pub owner is providing food and drinks. The local press is invited, and she will get free publicity in return.

[ … etcetera, well, you get the idea … ]

Concluding

I think such a hackathon will be great fun, highly creative, intensely social, worthwhile being part of, and it will create much publicity for our community, CHT and Humane Tech in general, drawing in many new members.

If successful we can hold it yearly, or even twice a year.