Published
I had the privilege to be invited to judge one of the PDA network’s Hackathon’s back in the pre-Covid days. I had some misgivings because my understanding of things like ‘data lakes’, ‘data variables’, ‘BI and Python’ was (and still is) rudimentary. I was worried that I wouldn’t understand what was happening and I’d find the language and the technical geekery of the whole thing a crashing bore.
I could not have been more wrong on every level. I had assumed that this would be all about the data and, whilst data was the fuel that fed the groups working in the hackathon, I realised very quickly that this was essentially a very human activity. On the one hand, I witnessed a demonstration of social learning in practice, with the noise and interaction between the various groups providing evidence of their excitement as they bounced ideas off one another and constructed the output of their hack collaboratively.
On the other, the outcomes of the hack, the very real, applied tools, offered clear and immediate solutions to real world human problems associated with construction safety or the human error associated with the request for proposal process.
Ed Hoffman, ex-Chief Knowledge Officer at NASA talks about ‘the sound of success’ in a high-performing team and on that basis the team performances on Hackathon hit the top notes.
I found myself caught up in the excitement of the hack. The looming deadline added to the frenetic nature of the activity and the working solutions offering a celebration of the ingenuity and the imagination of the delegates.
So I am very excited that, on 7th and 8th of October, Major Projects Association are working with the Project Data Analytics Network to host the first physical hackathon of 2021!
The event is free to Association members and the good news is that you can take part in the whole two days of the Hackathon if you are a
professional (or amateur) data analyst (register as a delegate) or, if like me you don’t know your byte from your bit, you can join one of the morning or afternoon guided tours to witness the alchemy happen (register as an observer), you can even be a judge, if you would like to gauge the teamworking skills, the ingenuity and the finished outputs from the groups (and you definitely don’t need to be technically minded to be a judge).
Whichever role you prefer, I urge you to check out the event details and the confirmed data challenges and to register and get involved in this event.
I’d be exaggerating if I said that the Hackathon I attended, changed my life. On the other hand, it did completely change my views on the role of project data analytics and transformed me from a position of ‘vague disinterest’ to one of ‘convinced advocacy’.