Hackathons: Kickstart a Movement from a Weekend
It all happened so quickly: you arrived at the hack-a-thon, got excited, met interesting people, came up with a great idea, built a prototype (in less than 12 hours) and presented to an adoring crowd.Then everyone went home. Slept. Ate. And lost momentum...Hackathons are evolving: from a room filled only with developers, to rooms full of social innovators -- developers, designers, planners, journalists, civic leaders and more -- coming together to address pressing urban issues (transportation, community development, energy use etc). This is exciting, and produces potentially groundbreaking ideas. But too often, the hackathon finishes and projects never see the light of day. The good news, is that it is relatively easy to turn these 48-hour geek-chic fests into events with lasting impact. This conversation will allow hacker organizations, government, businesses and citizens to discuss the value of hackathons and how to leverage them to kick-start change-making movements in cities.
Presenters
Christine's research and practice lies at the intersection of civic strategy and design, community mobilization and urban informatics. She directs the City Innovation Group and works with government, researchers and fellow-minded entrepreneurs, to create livable and sustainable cities through facilitating human-to-human, and human-computer interactions.
Prior to founding City Innovation Group she worked at MIT's SENSEable City Lab as the project leader for 'The Copenhagen Wheel' - a wheel that turns ordinary bikes into electric hybrids with regeneration and real-time environmental sensing capabilities and which pushes the boundaries of the 'internet of things'. This work debuted at the COP15 United Nations Climate Conference and has gone on to win numerous design awards.
Christine's work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and in academic and popular press, including: the COP15 Climate Conference, Ecological Urbanism at Harvard’s GSD, Senseable Cities: Exploring Urban Futures, in San Francisco, and in The New York Times, Scientific American and the Australian Financial Review. She speaks regularly about cities and innovation including at: South by South West 2011, Screen Media Expo, The Summer of Smart, and the Future of Urbanism. In 2011, she was named one of the top 100 Internet of Things thinkers.
Christine has a SMArchS Architecture and Urbanism degree from MIT and a Masters of Architecture degree from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Before her career in urban informatics, she practiced in both architectural and urban design offices.
Tuesday, March 13
