KICKSTARTING THE FIRST UK GENOME HACKATHON

SUMMARY

• Facilitating a workshop to debrief the Biodata Hackathon, in collaboration with my Sigma colleague Francis Rowland
• Capturing the experience for Hackathon Attendees and Challenge Partners as well as the event organising team

RESULT: An inspired and motivated team who went on to produce a hackathon with over 100 attendees

WHERE WE BEGAN

In Summer 2018, the Wellcome Genome Campus hosted its first Hackathon on the topic of genomes and biodata. The campus team wanted to harness the wealth and diversity of expertise and skills available in its research institutes and associated partners. At its inception, the project lead Jo Mills wanted to involve key stakeholders as early as possible, gather insights from them, and get their buy in.

As Sigma’s Business Designer, I worked with Jo and her team on campus to help shape the initial concept, facilitating an early ideation workshop with key stakeholders including potential funders, mentors, and hackathon team members.

ENGAGING STAKEHOLDERS AND CAPTURING INSIGHTS

The Wellcome Genome Campus, home to some of the world’s foremost institutes and organisations in genomics and computational biology, wanted to host its first Hackathon with a focus on Genomes and Biodata.

The project creator, Jo Mills, wanted to make sure that the hackathon was designed to create lasting impact for the entrepreneurs bringing their challenges, avoiding some of the criticism levelled at other similar events. Hackathons are now very common and the communities involved with them have become more critical about their long-term impact. Jo needed facilitation skills to help her engage key stakeholders from a very early stage, and maintain a laser focus on maximising long-term impact.

This hackathon had a strong entrepreneurial flavour, bringing together not just academia and industry from the life sciences and pharma, but also people who could provide patients’ perspectives, UX specialists, and those working actively at the fault line of scientific research and business. It was a heady, exciting mix.

FACILITATING THE WORKSHOP

• Establishing what Jo Mills and her team wanted to achieve
• Using some tried and tested techniques to help attendees get into a more creative headspace
• Using personas to capture the knowledge in the room on the kinds of people and organisations who would be interested in supporting an event of this type
• Encouraging a focus on people and outcomes
• Helping attendees capture their own notes throughout the session with simple frameworks

AN INSPIRED, MOTIVATED TEAM

sEE THE WORKSHOP IN ACTION

ONTO THE MAIN EVENT

Following the workshop, planning continued. The following Summer, in 2018, event went ahead with after further support from the Sigma team. My colleague Francis Rowland worked closely with event partners to choose and frame the challenges they wanted to attendees to take on over two days. At the hackathon itself, myself and my Sigma colleagues joined the event as mentors.

WATCH WHAT HAPPENED AT THE HACKATHON IN 2018

WHAT WE SHARED

I worked with our Sigma Summer Intern, Elena Lockyear, to capture six essentials for a successful hackathon. You can read more about that on the Sigma site.

I worked with my colleagues to capture the role designers can play in an event of this type, and how my teammates created a card deck of tools to give attendees quick access to design thinking techniques. You can also read more about that on the Sigma site.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

After the event, I worked with Jo and her team to debrief the event using journey mapping techniques. You can read more about that here.