Transcriber: Diana Li Reviewer: Denise RQ
I'm here today, and I have to tell you something.
I was really afraid to do this.
I even have to look at kitty cat photos to calm myself down.
(Laughter)
But, I ask myself, what is a TED talk?
Why am I even doing one if I am afraid?
Well, a TED talk is about stepping into the city garden, the arena,
this auditorium, with Plato, Socrates, Hypatia, to talk shop.
That is what I am asked to do here today with you.
But even though I am afraid, I'm glad that I'm here.
I'm glad to tell you why you should join a hackathon,
and what it means for you to be innovative.
So what is a hackathon?
When you think of a hackathon,
you might think of events where you might see techies,
or people hunch over their computers typing away,
or that you have to write in a language call HTML, C++, Python, Ruby,
It sounds complicated.
Or you might think of who might go to a hackathon,
you might say a loner, a gamer, or a computer geek.
But I like to think of it as more than that.
OK, let me reveal something else about me.
I am none of those characteristics,
except, of course, geek, proud geek.
OK, but I don't program, I don't know C++,
though I did take a course at Ladies Learning Code.
I'm not a loner, I'm not a gamer,
but yet I'm into hacking, and I'm into helping other people hack.
So what or who is a hacker?
According to Steven Levy, who wrote the book
Hackers: Heroes, of the Computer Revolution,
and also a prominent hacker himself,
he describes hackers as those people that like the idea
of messing around, tinkering, and making things.
Hackers are part of the do-it-yourself, or maker culture.
You just have to go to Pinterest to find an assortment of hacks,
hacks for life, hacks for Ikea furniture,
or in your case,
when you go to university or college, check out the college hacks.
What it shows you is that anybody can be a hacker.
A hacker is somebody who sees a problem,
who has an obstacle that they are trying to overcome,
who likes to take apart things
but then put them back together in a whole new way.
A hacker is somebody that I like to think of as the "idea person",
the business-minded, the artist, the historian, the writer,
the cyclist, the driver, the sports player,
a student, a researcher...
Basically, anyone. A citizen. You.
Just like the arena of conversation that I am here, part of today,
and even how you might think of as libraries.
I want you to remember that a hackathon is a space
of sharing ideas, being creative, and tapping into your skills,
to help yourself, or to help others achieve a shared vision, goal, or product.
So hackathons, or the type of events that I organize,
are marathon events that bring together computer programmers
with other researchers, or students, other people to build
websites, apps, widgets, or other software projects.
These hackathons, when I say marathon events,
I mean events that actually will last 24 hours straight, 48 hours straight,
with little or no sleep and lots of coffee,
lots and lots of coffee.
And if you are lucky, there is even Red Bull there.
So these hackathons, we are starting to see them,
we usually see them in computer science and engineering schools,
which can make them a bit exclusive to those students.
But we are also starting to see them pop into cities.
There was a recent one on April Fool Day in Toronto
called the Decongestion Hackathon,
that was dealing with downtown traffic congestion.
We are also starting to see hackers in the library.
But not when I started at York University as an engineering librarian, in 2012.
Ao imagine me sitting at the reference desk,
always being asked if I am a student,
even today I was asked if I was a student.
So, trying to pave my way away from myself as a librarian,
trying to find a way to outreach to students
and to promote the library service and skills.
I had a problem, I needed to outreach to students,
I needed to meet with the professors that I was supposed to be working with,
and find a way connect back to the library services.
So, like a sensible librarian, I read.
I went to the public library, and I took out WIRED Magazine,
and what I read and what I found out, was an article that would spark an idea
and also mobilize students to think themselves as innovators.
The article is called The 48 Hours Startup,
it is in the March 2012 issue.
What I read was what is a hackathon, and how it can spur creativity,
and when I read that, I knew it was something I wanted to organize
in my library, in my academic institution.
Then I had to figure out, how was I going to organize it?
What are the logistics?
So that was my next problem, and I went to look out
to see if there is any examples of libraries and hackathons.
I couldn't find any.
So I had to think to myself, why libraries and hackathons?
Would I just be riding on the bandwagon of all the hackathons that were out there?
How could I set the library apart to give reasons of why hackathons in libraries?
So, of course, this required even more research.
I had to go out and read some articles,
I had to meet with researchers at the iSchool
at University of Toronto where I went to school.
I also talked to my colleagues who have actually been to hackathons.
From all the information that I gathered,
I organized my first hackathon in 2013, themed Open York Data.
The feedback from students was amazing,
they really liked the collaborative feeling.
They like the day of having mentors.
They wanted to know when was the next one.
And they were starting to get hackathon mania.
And frankly, so was I.
So we decided to make it an annual event at York,
so the next hackathon that I organized
was Culture and Technology in a Mobile World,
followed by Hacking for a Better World,
and most recently, my colleagues organized Making a Difference with Data hackathon.
This year, they had 75 participants,
compared to 25 in the first year that I organized.
They had a more diverse set of mentors,
and they have breakout tutorials to help students
with their technical and critical skills around topics such as
the business model generation, or even social entrepreneurship.
And I should mention that the hackathons that I organized at York University
was not competitive.
There wasn't a first prize, there wasn't a second prize,
there wasn't a third prize,
and there was no huge pot of money at the end of the rainbow.
And the reason people keep coming back to this hackathon,
people were still coming back,
and that is because they like the idea of having mentors and working with others.
There were still judges and mentors
to help them critically evaluate their outcomes.
And there were actually venture capitalists to help
to see if there are any projects to potentially work with.
These students really liked the idea
of collaboratively sharing their ideas with others,
and that's what drove them in their incentive
to continue coming back to these hackathons.
So at Centennial College, where I currently work,
I worked with the applied research and innovation center
to organize a student hackathon for an entrepreneurship conference.
The Tech Meets Main Street wearable hackathon
was about bringing together students
to hack about wearable technology for society.
They had to think of concepts and ideas, they had to think of design issues,
and they also had to think of business aspects.
And if they had it, they also had to bring in
their hard and soft engineering skills.
So with the uncompetitive library hackathon,
it really builds upon ideas of collaborative sharing,
knowledge sharing in an open space, where people can discuss
within scholarly conversations with the researchers and peers.
So my first reason for why you should join a hackathon
is that hackathon means solving problems.
What type of problems?
Well, basically any problem you may care about.
For example, another amazing hackathons
are the ones organized by Random Hacks of Kindness.
This is an organization that hacks about social issues,
so they might work with a not-for-profit organization,
like Amnesty International, to help them hack about
an electronic petition form;
or they might work with Oxfam, to build a user-generated debate forum;
or they even hack for architectural solutions
for people that are deaf.
What it shows you is that hacking is for everyone.
Hacking requires people from all walks of life.
So whether you are an architect,
work for a not-for-profit organization, are a student,
or understand the needs of accessibility or disability needs,
or a person that just likes to solve a problem,
so to make a positive societal impact.
If you like to solve problems or help other people solve problems,
then you are welcome to join a hackathon,
and no computer programming skills are required to join a hackathon.
So when you think of libraries, you are probably thinking - books.
But there is way more happening behind those open doors.
There is a wealth of information and services that you can access,
or anybody in the community can access, at the library,
and if you didn't know this already, for free.
So whether you need updating on your word processing skills,
or maybe you need help fixing your bike,
or you are part of a book club in the library,
the library is meant to be a neighbourhood hub.
In this sense, hackathons, specifically in libraries,
means social inclusion.
And the fundamental corner stone of libraries
is that it promotes dialogue,
that they help to encourage and promote engaged citizenship.
And the idea is that anybody, regardless of your race or gender,
socioeconomic background, you can go to the library
to be informed about issues around the government,
or civic public policy, or about emerging technologies.
What we are seeing now is that libraries are about,
knowledge sharing, collaborativeness, and critical thinking,
and that is how we want to build libraries upon those sentiments.
So it is in this sentiment
that hacking and making in libraries are happening,
and in my perspective are why we should be talking
about hacking and making in libraries.
So one example of social inclusion is this app that was developed
at York University's hackathon, I'm@York.
So, at York, there were, at this hackathon,
there were 3 different groups working on a similar topic.
They were trying to build an app to help students find their way around campus.
I don't know if you have been to York University,
it's one of the largest campuses in Canada
It is huge.
Almost seems like a maze for a first-year student.
We actually have an underground pathway, that I consider a maze,
I have never been down there.
And, so what happened was, because there were three different groups
working on this, and it is a non-competitive hackathon,
the groups end up sharing ideas with each other.
And each time they had a break-through in their coding,
they would share with the other group,
so they can help improve each other's projects.
So even though there is no incentive, or prize at the end,
these students were driven by the fact that they can help
make somebody else's life easier.
And they like the idea of sharing their resources,
so to make their selves, and their projects, better.
It was an open space and a safe place,
and this is exactly the type of research environment
that the library promotes, open access.
Open access is a movement to make all research available,
freely, anywhere to everyone.
So that way, people like you don't have to pay
hundreds of dollars to read a research article.
And the idea is, if you share your research,
people can learn, and it helps advance research in a field.
So when you think about it, universities and colleges,
the research that is happening there, is usually publicly funded.
But yet the public has to pay the access those articles
and the research that's coming out of it.
In the sense, access to information is a human right,
and similarly, the library hackfest, because it is non-competitive,
it helps to promote open collaboration and sharing of resources,
so that anybody can bring their experience and expertise
to make somebody else's idea better.
And even the pictures that you see up on the screen,
and even the presentation template that I am using,
they are open.
They have a Creative Commons License, which means I could use
somebody else's photography to make my presentation better.
And it is in this sentiment, the libraries and hackathons
are non-competitive and about collaboration.
This leads me to my next point of why you should joint a hackathon,
and why hackathons should be in libraries.
Hackathon means critical making.
Critical making is about civic engagement,
social inclusion, creativity, and engagement,
which researcher Matt Rado at the iSchool
at University of Toronto calls critical making.
Critical making is about bringing together the theoretical sides of critical thinking
with the practical sides of actually physically making something.
Critical making is reflective, it is technical,
and helps to analyze your outcomes and designs,
your problems and constrains, and then connecting it back
to theoretical issues such as surveillance, privacy, equity or justice.
One app that was developed at Hacking for a Better World hackathon was Timeify,
and this example really brings together the three different concepts:
how hackathons solve problems,
how it is about social inclusion and critical making.
This app is based off the York University ads
called This Is My Time.
You might have seen them around buses or subway platform,
The idea is that there is a student that shows her dreams and aspiration.
The person who came up with this app, Timeify,
felt that the ad was exclusive, it was only meant
for those certain students that were selected.
He wanted to change that.
He wanted every student to be able to create their own This Is My Time,
so that they can feel part of the York University culture.
It's in this sentiment that this app was really about equitable access,
social inclusion, and then connecting it back
to a broader social and cultural need at York University.
This student got the real-life experience at the hackathon,
so when you go out to university or college,
you want to make sure that you can apply what you learnt in class -
so the critical thinking parts - to the real-life scenarios,
the making-and-doing side of things.
And that is what we call "experiential education".
And this is one of the reasons why library hackathons should happen.
They are about knowledge sharing, collaboration,
and in my perspective, should never be about competition.
Library hackathons help to improve people's literacy around innovation,
and it helps to build upon a foundational bearings
and the history of the library's connection to improve broader
social and cultural issues.
So I want you to take this moment
and think about an issue that you have,
maybe it is with an app that you have on your phone
that you think could be better;
or maybe it is something at school, is there a problem at school
that needs fixing, that can be done more efficiently?
I want you to take that, write that down,
now take that idea and join a hackathon,
or better yet, why don't you organize a hackathon for this school?
Hack out your problems with your friends,
students, teachers, and don't forget the coffee
because you'll need it.
And even though I don't organize a York hackathon anymore,
the question is where am I going to take my creativity next?
If I'm going to be critically thinking, I going to be making sure
that I am reading, watching and listening.
So if you take one thing away from this talk,
it's that innovation is for everyone.
And yes, join a hackathon.
So I leave you with one last question,
what is your creativity?
Thank you.
(Applause)