responsible innovation for the public good

HACKATHON FOR

RESPONSIBLE

DESIGN

Sponsors and Collaborators

$10,000

Aggregate cash will be awarded to teams by judge panels in May 2022. In addition, teams receive:

Lectures/Seminars

Prior to the hackathon participants are addressed by ANU academics about various thinking skills (e.g. Design Thinking, Systems Thinking)

Weekly Workshops

Rapid workshops focusing on ideation, validation, business models and building participant skills to pitch their novel concept with impact.

Mentors

We have a truly inspiring and experienced mentor pool teams can tap into as they conceptualise and evolve their novel ideas.

Post-rHack

Opportunity to access sponsors or participate in CBRIN programs (such as Idea 2 Impact), to take your idea to the next level.

rHack

— A Hackathon to promote responsible innovation

Introducing rHackathon

Hackathons play an increasingly recognized role in creating engagement pathways globally. Companies use these events as a platform for innovation and marketing exposure, and hackers consider them as unique opportunity for learning, excitement, and potentially building their career. As researchers argue these intense brainstorming events have been generally successful in providing participants with a platform to meet, collaborate, and create new long-lasting connections beyond the short-term focus of the event.

Primarily, centered on computer programming and others involved software development, most of these events are focusing on technological innovation without paying due attention to social, ethical, and environmental concerns. In rHackathon we seek to turn Hackathon on its head, reorient and thus liberate its potential to find and incentivize not only the best innovation, but the most responsible one.

rHackathon and the public good

The history of civic hackathons shows these events have also been used to foster technological innovation and create a social forum for those interested in working for the public good—addressing health, education, and housing issues. As we might expect, the winners of these hackathons are usually team with (overly) technical solutions to problems without considering the secondary effect of their proposed innovation in other systems such as society, environment, and politics.

rHackathon is particularly developed and designed to respond to this lack of responsible thinking and practice in imagination and innovation. It is built on the premise that considering non-technical aspects of innovation, could become the magic formula we need to push hackers into new directions that could potentially benefit the entire community, and meet our world’s evolving challenges.

rHackathon is part of the broader attempt undertaken by UNESCO Chair for Science communication and Public Good, to connect the RRI to a conversation on public good.

Judging Criteria

In hackathons when teams are invited to demonstrate their project, they are conventionally judged based on the criteria such as their business value, impact, efficiency, accuracy, and how realistic they are. In rHackathon, however, we focus more on ‘responsibility‘ to evaluate the success of projects in incorporating responsible thinking into the development of the innovation—that is their reflection about social, ethical, and environmental concerns.

Teams in our hackathon need to score high in five criteria plus add something extra to the mix. We are looking for responsible solutions that are validated, viable, are pitched well.

Innovation

Responsibility

Impact

Pitch

Viability

Secret Sauce

Challenges are in two streams

Stream 1 – Citizen Science

Stream 2 – Chatbots for Deliberation

We have experienced mentors from industry and academia to help participants navigate through these challenges!

Dates and Timing

Contest Registration Period: May 5 – May 15, 2022 (11pm AEDT)

Hackathon Event: May 23, 2022 (9am-5 pm AEDT)

Winners Announced on May 23,2022 (4 pm AEDT)

IMPORTANT NOTE: To be eligible for Prizes , Participants (as defined below) may be asked to make required changes, resubmit and receive approval for the organizers.

Venue (Hybrid)

Canberra-based participants: Canberra Innovation Network | 5/1 Moore St, Canberra ACT 2601

Remote participants: REMO | interactive virtual event platform

Contact

If you have any questions or comments, or wish to send us any notice regarding rHackathon, please email the Project Lead Dr Ehsan Nabavi at ehsan.nabavi@anu.edu.au.