To make an impact within the Corona situation, I attended the #VersusVirus Hackathon this weekend as a Mentor, resp. later on as Mentor Lead. As it was my first hackathon and the biggest online gathering I ever attended, I could have only guessed what I will be facing over the time from Friday morning until Monday lunch-time. And to be honest – I was wrong, with everything.
I would never have guessed how much chaos was there in the beginning. When I paused, checking Slack for some minutes, in the beginning, I was welcomed back with nearly 300 unread messages – and this was only one of the few hundred channels. It seemed no-one ever worked with Slack, threads and search functions were not used, so it was overwhelming. I did not know which request to tackle first and if others might ever see answers in a slack-thread. Do not take me wrong; the organization of the event was impressive! Taking into account that it took less than 2 weeks to organize this, it is unbelievable what the team brought to life. What I described above is the power of around 5000 motivated people thrown into a venture to solve huge challenges under really high time-pressure…
I couldn’t believe how positive everyone was
The power of the crowd-questions was not the only thing I was wrong and underestimated. What I really did not expect in that scale was how fast patterns occurred and even more important, how much engagement there was. I am still stunned on the level of people that reached out to offer help, how friendly, positive and thankful everyone was and how that in the end, all added up to a social experience that I haven’t had in my entire life.
Never underestimate the power of online
The third thing I misjudged was the power of online. I recently posted an article about how online collaboration can work better – but this? Just WOW! In retrospect, offline events and corporate work feel like being at a concert. You see the people on stage, and a lot depends on their direction. You feel the crowd, but real interaction only happens with the few around you. Completely different from this online hackathon… Specially skilled people of any kind, even members of the parliament – just a click away! It felt so near, although people were so far away.
The results are just great!
This Mentoring experience felt just humbling. I supported where I could, and I am really happy that I could offer help to some teams and individuals. The results? Great! Someone in the mentor chat wrote: “Can’t we just offer all of those beautiful people a job? I love all those projects!”. Personally, I really look forward to further supporting this journey of creating impact!
Is this text all about me? No. The opposite. What I described above was mentioned in so many other zoom calls, chats etc. by others. All people I spoke to (really, all!) are overly thankful for this experience, the learnings, and the connections they made. Huge props to the organizers, this was an awesome and crazy rollercoaster ride!
Fritz Seidel
Co-owner DAY8 Innovation Advisory
This post was first published on Impact Hub Zürich
