Next Hackathon

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20-22nd February 2015

Rainmaking Loft

International House                                                                     

1 St Katherine's Way

London E1W 1UN

[MAP]

 

 

What:

UN Influx aims to explore the idea and means for building the concept that greater public engagement with the UN is a measure of success. This is sought by organising hackathons.

 

This is a collaborative and competitive digital prototyping event to produce digital tools, in this case for making a more credible and effective UN through by asking the challenge question:

 

How can digital innovation help the UN and the public work more effectively together?*

 

*Further advisory guidelines below- '7 Ways to Skin This Challenge'

 

When:

Friday 20th

5.30pm Registration Open

6.00pm Opening Evening Intro & Pitching Starts (ends 8pm approx) 

 

Saturday 21st

9.00am Proposition Development Session

11.00am-1pm Mentors Join

1pm Lunch & Hack On

3.00- 4.00pm Development Check Point

6.30pm Dinner & Hack On

(Staying overnight, possible but not glamorous)

 

Sunday 22nd 

9.00am Pitching Training

2.00pm Pitching Check Point & Tech Rehersal

4.00pm Final Presentations

5.30pm Awards

6.00pm Celebrate

 

Needs:

• Do bring you laptops and anything else you require to work happily

and productively.

• Drinks available throughout. Meals will be provided but only snacks

during the opening and closing evenings.

• Yes, you can stay overnight, bring sleeping bags as required, only

cusions and no beds but showers available. Eyemasks & earplugs

recommened!

 

We plan an international event in Autumn 2015 to follow this.

 

Facebook group available now for discussions about the event: www.facebook.com/uninflux.

 

Participation:

We are looking for 75 participants with skills split according to people with primarily (1) ideas, (2) digital designers and (3) developers to participate. Teams may be pre-formed but otherwise you can form a team through the opening evening pitching session. We can also host up to 75 guests to attend the Final Show presentation. 

 

Participant tickets are £20 after the £10 'early bird' tickets have gone. Guest tickets to the Final Show are £5 for 'early bird and £10 regularly. These prices cover basic food & drinks, and are below cost price. We are a non profit charity, however please contact us if consessions are appropriate and/or your need a subsidy and you really want to join in.  NB, Eventbrite do charge a small booking fee. 

 

 

Facilitator & Support:

We have excellent support running the event with us in the shape of facilitator Klaus Bravenboer from Hack Hummanity acting on behalf of Venture Scout who are also offering support from Cilia Li and her team to make sure we have all that we need to keep going. Click on the images for more information.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our 7 Judges:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mentors:

We have experts attending 11am-1pm on Saturday 21st February to share their digital experience and UN subject matter knowledge. 

 

 

                            UN Specialists                                                       Digital Experts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UN Connections:

We have forged links with various UN related bodies in order to progress the work of UN Influx to the UN system.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Competition:

We’ll have prizes worth £2500 for winners, as judged by a panel of experts from tech and international politics.

Prize 1: Head Prize- Most logically brilliant work (£500)

Prize 2: Heart Prize- Most emotionally inspiring proposition (£500)

Prize 3: Traction Prize- The most active engagement within 1 month. Based on twitter activity & other evidence. (£500)

Prize 4: LIMUN Prize- The favourite proposition of the 1700 attendees of the London International Model UN Conference in February 27-29th 2015 (£500)

Prize 5: *NEW* Technical Prize- Coders will vote among themselves for the best ingenuity; the smartest application of technology used in new ways. (£500)

 

Judging is based on 3 criteria;

 

SUITABILITY - how well it addresses the challenge statement

 

FEASIBILITY - how readily the resources required are available for implementation

 

ACCEPTABILITY  - how acceptable the proposition is to key stakeholders required for implementation

 

We will also be spring boarding the best ideas and teams towards the Google Impact Challenge which offers support and up to £500k to a few selected UK based non-profit projects each year. See Google Impact Awards. 

 

*Guidelines: 7 Ways to Skin this Challenge

In order to help tackle this challenge there are a number of ways to focus on a smaller target within the big, broad challenge question:

 

0. PROBLEM STATEMENT- We can't stress strongly enough how important it is to establish what problem your teams is tackling. If the pronblem is defined well enough the solution is far more likely to appear, and with less pain! As an example of this a team at an event said the problem they faced was 'queuing'. They went in circles trying to fix 'queuing'. It was only went we clarified problems more specifically that progress was made. 'Queueing is boring' lead to solutions about making it fun (that could be tested) and 'Queuing wastes peoples' time' lead to solutions that could be tested against the metric of whether they saved people time. The point is that your problem statement should establish a measure against which you can gauage if various solutions work or not. Here we'broken down the overarching challenge into smaller challenges:

 

- How can the public create a less static and more dynamic form of UN membership?

- How can the public encourage the memeber states to pay their UN contributions?

- How can we make the UN a significant issue during national elections?

- How can we get the public more engaged with the resolutions passing at the UN?

- How can we help the public to be better informed about the UN's work?

 

1. KNOW YOUR SUBJECT - There is a wide range of sources online with information about what the UN is, its aims, history and weaknesses/strengths. Aside from the UN's website (www.un.org), the UN's Dag Hammarskjold Library  (http://ask.un.org/) another good source to highlight is the United Nations Association UK (www.una.org.uk) who will be attending our event to provide some of this detail in person. Don't worry too much, nobody knows everything and we trust there will be a balance of subject matter (and tech/design) experts to go around. If everyone attending thinks of one idea or issue of interest it's ideal.

 

2. THINK USER/AUDIENCE - In order to succeed you will probably need to focus on one type of user. A solution 'for everybody' is more likely to be suitable for 'nobody'. We recommend considering these example audiences:-

 

a) International Affairs Enthusiasts- examples of these people would be students who attend model UN confernces like LIMUN which will be judging one of the prizes of our event and usually lose interest after graduating. Other example could be found by looking through Avaaz.org for people online interestedin intenational affaires. The UN has over 1million friends on Facebook; what can we do better for them?

b) UN Staff- these people are well positioned to share insights about what aspects of their work would improve the relationship between the UN and the public from their end.

c) Non Enthusiasts- a tough but rewarding audience to target. It would be possible to use 'the man on the street' as a source of insights asking what it would take for them to engage with the work of the UN.

d) Youth- Focusing on young people is a great way to develop more creative and playful concepts, often resulting in things that adults can enjoy too. Getting a smile from people is a strong was to build engagement.

e) Other- Think of other groups, many are suitable targets, but probably not best to target 'everyone'.

 

3. TERRITORIES - There are some areas of UN activity that could provide a sharper focus to your proposition. Here are some examples:-

a) 1in 7 Billion- We hear that this project to promote more public engagement in the selection of the next Secretary General of the UN (currently made my the permanent 5 members of the security council behind close doors). (www.1for7billion.org) Problem hypothesis: the public can't help select the UN's leader which decreases acceptance of them and the UN generally. 

b) General Assembly Voting - People don't often get engaged but why not play/gamify the voting that the UN does to factor in different weighting. E.g if they are looking at maritime affairs why not show how result would differ if weighted for each country's respective coastline. Just one example but basically the problem hypothesis here is: that individuals are not able to engage in voting decreases their interest and involvement.

c) Personel- i) Front Lines. People don't get much sight of what peacekeepers and other front line personel do means that the public can't build empathy and support for these people. ii) Representatives. That few people know who their UN Ambassador is so don't benefit from championing them.

d) Other - There are many angles to consider and while there are no rules of your focus we recommend that with just 48hrs it is probably best not to redesign the entire UN but find a strong solution for a part or territory.

 

4. DATA - By gathering are accessing specific data it may be possible to use this an an insight on which to develop a proposition. There are many APIs (basically a pipe with data available that coders can pull into proporsitions) and particularly social media information would be a good source of information. If using a data lead proposition you should still establish what the problem statement/hypothesis is that you're addressing.

 

Top Sources So Far:

 

• RISE- Gamification Platform http://docs.risedotglobal.apiary.io/

UN GA Voting http://www.un.org/en/ga/documents/voting.asp

• 3 Scale's UN Data API https://www.undata-api.org/

• 3 Scale's othe APIs http://www.3scale.net/our-customers/ 

• Popular Communications API list http://www.apidaze.io/

• General API list http://apis.io/ 900 APIs 

• 3 Words (API) uses 3 words to identify 3m x 3m plots or land to identify locations (most of the developing world doesn't have addresses) 

Film about us here - what3words.com/about
Developer site here - developer.what3words.com

 

5. IDEAS - We don't want to shape your thinking too much but if you find it helpful we have some ideas we think might be suitable to develop in response to the challenge.

 

a) 3rd Eye. It could be that people could be brought in live to some front line or diplomatic situations to get closer to the UN action. 

b) Weighted Vote Check. Validating the General Assembly voting by generating info graphics of which countries vote differnt ways and comparing this with the proportions on the world's wealth, population or registered supporters of the UN to reveal previously unseen perspectives.

c) Veto the Veto. Could civil society build the means to challenge the veto privelege of the UN's permanent 5 members of the Security Council (something widely cited to make the UN unresponsive). NB, the legal structure means any formally change would require agreement of all 193 member states so would probably be limited to informal political influence).

d) Money Maker. Given the scope of the UN's work the funding it has is pitifully small. Again, legal chanllenges exist as technically only member state can fund it and only their allocated contributions but the contribution per person (approx$1.5 per US citizen for example) suggests room for more. Also, it's usual for 40% of nations to have unpaid dues to the UN, undermining its power. Definitely room for improvements on financial matters!

e) Resolution-izer - The UN has a challenge of forming agreements across many members and many languages. Can we create software to support this?

f) National Link. More of a problem statement than idea: how can we make the UN into a point at during national elections of its members?

g) ..is for Graphics. How can we repeatedly generate more powerful info-graphics to explain what the UN is doing?

 

 

6. TIME KEEPING - During the event we will be providing support sessions and gates, times by which you should reach a certain stage of development. We hope this'll give you every chance of completing a working prototype of your propositions.

 

7. SANITY CHECK - It's a good idea to check your ideas with truly indepent people and target audiences as much as possible. In particular we recommend checking for 4 specific benefits of value: financial benefit (save or make them money), emotional (give users an emotional boost prompting action), information (giving desired knowledge, e.g. the football scores at 3.30pm on Sat is important for me!), temporal (same users time). As well as understanding whch of these elements you're going for, think about propositions that can keep satsfying users repeatedly.

 

 

Contact:

Max Kalis

mwhkalis@gmail.com

[+44] 07971 853520, Skype: max.kalis

 

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