business
GIRLS IN TECH HACKATHON
We explore the Girls in Tech hackathon, introducing what hackathons are all about and why they’re run by companies like Facebook and Google. We’ll show you why you should consider running your own hackathons, and how you can get involved with Girls in Tech.
BY GRAEME FULTON
A
s Girls in Tech approaches their one year anniversary since the launch of the Gibraltar chapter, real-world dividends are manifesting in the community as a result of their social initiatives. Last November saw their first “Hacking for Humanity” hackathon - a two day event where developers, designers and product managers banded together to collaborate on solving technical problems for various Gibraltarbased charities and non-profits. What is a hackathon and who can participate? To put it simply, a hackathon is an event where people come together into one space (physical or digital) and work with technology to turn ideas into reality within a short time constraint. You don’t need to be a programmer, or even a technical person – the more diverse the people, the greater the range of ideas that can emerge. GIBRALTAR MAGAZINE MARCH 2018
The Girls in Tech hackathon itself is an open event for both male and female participants to promote gender equality and bridge the gap in the technology spaces. For instance, the last event in November saw twenty-eight participants get the chance to flex their skills, work with fellow hackers, and learn something new – all whilst providing an opportunity to contribute to social causes. Hackathon heroes The time-sensitive yet open nature of hackathons can lead to results that can’t be replicated in regular working environments. For example, Facebook’s famous ‘Like’ button actually started out as an ‘Awesome’ button, produced in an internal company hackathon at Facebook. Facebook’s ‘Chat’ feature emerged in a similar way. Now these are both core features of the Facebook experience. Another example of a hackathon success
was when Skype spent $85m on a popular social messaging app called GroupMe, which started out as a simple idea that was given life through a community hackathon run by TechCrunch, a leading technology news community. Evidently, unlike most regular day jobs, hackathons provide an environment where risk taking is encouraged and failure isn’t frowned upon, giving people the chance to think out of the box and produce awesome things. It’s a great reason to run one in your own company. Furthermore, similar results were seen at Girls in Tech’s Hacking for Humanity - one team produced such a great prototype that Childline decided to develop it into a real solution. Fresh perspectives on business challenges Girls in Tech worked alongside three social initiatives to bring fresh perspec25