[11-12.12] Hack4SocialGood

#Hack4SocialGood – an innovations workshop for inclusive digitalization taking place in June, is hosted by BFH with participation from social workers, charities and non-profits, organized by a team of social scientists with my support on behalf of Open Knowledge. You can already sign up here:

Some background on the exchanges that took place in preparation here:

I am looking forward to this as a big milestone. Thanks for the interest, and stay tuned!

https://twitter.com/SocietyData/status/1229446057836326914?s=20

After careful consideration, we have decided to postpone the event until 11-12 of December 2020. A social hack in the pre-Christmas period actually fits quite well. Please save the date, and visit the BFH website for details.

Details about the upcoming Hack4SocialGood are available in English here:

We are still keen to see people from digital sustainability and social work communities sign up by the December 3 deadline, at which point there will be opportunities to get started with the online set up. Please don’t hesitate to let me know or just follow the links on that page if you’re interested!

Congratulations to the five Hack4SocialGood 2020 teams whose work will „for sure help [participating Social Work organisations] in further developing services“, and DANKE to all challengers and supporters for your engagement :raised_hands: All the resulting documentation and pitch videos are linked here:

An intense and productive weekend, we started with three very thought-provoking and relevant inputs about digital ethics, data management, and public sector projects. Our Covid-19 safety concept prevented physical participation except for the organizers and challenge providers, who were isolated in individual rooms at the Berner Fachhochschule campus and at the :house_with_garden: Köniz Coworking space.

Working closely with the BFH IT department, we integrated the hackathon platform with Microsoft Teams for seamless and effective online collaboration. We had about 70 people registered and interacting in this way.

You can find the recordings of presentations and workshops linked in the schedule and published on the Switchtube channel. Keep scrolling for some social media coverage:

A prize from sozialinfo.ch was announced for a compelling project at the start of our event, providing additional motivation and context for the world of social work. Check out and follow Let’s Talk: Gaming!

As mentioned earlier here, methodological research into hackathons was a major motivator of this event. We are hoping that there will be diverse and useful inputs for people in the social work field and elsewhere from this study.

To make this an extra special weekend we had promi-guests to keep us entertained and yoga-experts to give us extra poise and help everyone to sustain the energy for the end-of-year hackathon.

Congratulations to ALL participants who made it through to the last mile!

A press release on the BFH website announcing winners of the jury vote and public vote is here:

We now have plenty of compelling reasons and extra rocket fuel to continue working on these ideas. We have worked on introducing more people to the hackathon as a powerful tool that they can continue using to help weather the storms of rapid digitalisation and change. We have raised some money for charity - and you can too donate in support until the end of the year at hack4socialgood.ch :bowing_man: