29. Hack the crisis with Annaam Butt
When Europe was first hit with the coronavirus back in March, the non-profit organisation OpenHack decided to help and hosted a 48 hour long hackathon coined Hack the Crisis. In today’s episode of Let’s tech-podden, Henrik sits down with hackathon leader Annaam Butt to talk about the solutions that came to fruition, open source and how you can get involved.
Links
Get in touch with Annaam on LinkedIn
Visit OpenHack’s website
Find all projects and solutions on OpenHack’s Github page
Myndigheten för digital förvaltning, DIGG
Examples of solutions that have grown out of OpenHack; Break Even, BrightAct and VoiceMed
Examples of OpenHack partners; Sida, UNICEF and Arbetsförmedlingen
If you don’t have time to tune in…
HE: Welcome to the Let’s tech podcast. I’m Henrik Enström, and I am CEO of Codic Consulting and Codic Education, who do this podcast. And I should also mention Linnéa, who does actually most of the job around the pod, with booking, questions research and editing, and Jonathan, who’s in the room right now with us. He’s doing all the technical stuff, photography, video, editing and the sound part that we record this with. So, thanks to you. And today, we welcome Annaam Butt. You’re hackathon project leader for OpenHack, and you’re also program manager and Scrum master at CGI, correct?
AB: Yes, that’s correct, and thank you.
HE: Can you tell us a bit more about yourself, and your involvement in OpenHack?
AB: Absolutely. So, I am originally from Pakistan, and I moved to Sweden in 2016 to do my masters at Chalmers University, where I got a scholarship. This was when I had just started my studies, and I was really interested in applying my skills because my studies were in project management, and I really wanted to try out actual projects to apply my skills to and what I was learning, and also do some voluntary non-profit work. And interestingly one of my classmates was actually going to a talk being held by Engineers Without Borders, Ingenjörer utan gränser, and there, when I also went with him, we found that they were recruiting a project team for something called OpenHack.
HE: Why did you find that interesting?
AB: I found that interesting because it was such a new concept for me, and they were looking for a project leader which is perfect, which is exactly what I wanted to do, and more so because it was about using your skills to make a difference and do some good in the world. The background of OpenHack is that in 2015 a student at Lund University had though: “How can I use my skills as a software engineer to make the world a better place?” He started thinking around hackathons, a play on the word hack-marathons. Think coders wearing hoodies and drinking Redbull and doing lots of coding, and started thinking around open source, and basically combine the two words to form the idea of OpenHack. The aim with that is to conduct 48 hour-hackathons to solve social and humanitarian challenges. So, bring people from different backgrounds, come together in one place and develop solutions and do some good in the world.
HE: Is it a requirement that everything is open source for OpenHack?
AB: Yes, more than a requirement. I think it’s the essence of what we do, so all the solutions that are developed in those hackathons are available for anyone to take up and continue with. You can find them on our GitHub page as well.
HE: Your involvement started with basically an ad for this position, and you applied, and you got the job?
AB: Yes, so I applied, and I interviewed with the student leader at that time at Engineers Without Borders and I got the position as project leader to organise the first OpenHack in Gothenburg. So, the hackathon in Gothenburg. My job started with recruiting a team, and basically starting from scratch. I had never done a hackathon before, so this was really interesting for me, and really treading new waters, so to speak. We started from there and in that year, this was in 2017, when I started, they were doing the first hackathon in Uppsala as well, so the team that I had recruited, until that point we went to Uppsala to volunteer and to just experience what a hackathon is like. That was our first real experience just months before we were supposed to do our own hackathon, and it was super fun.
HE: Wow. Maybe we should mention the format?
AB: Yes. OpenHacks are typically a competition.
HE: It’s a good motivator, right? To win a competition.
AB: Exactly. And we’ve had three, four categories. Sometimes we’ve had money as a price in the end, but more often than not, it’s the recognition. The format usually is that it starts on a Friday evening, there’s a mingling and there are case presentations so you hear what organisations are there and what challenges they’re proposing, and then you have a networking session where you can find people, form a team, and start working from there. So, Saturday mornings are usually the time when you really start getting into it. We usually do talks to keep the participants motivated. We try to do some activities. We’ve had yoga once, for example. We’ve had a band come and play once.
HE: Nice.
“I see a huge benefit in [open source], where we don’t hold on to our ideas. If you have a great idea, put it out there, and others can benefit from it. ”
AB: So, you have these different things that are of course optional for you to join, but also when you’re tired of developing a solution or trying to find a way, you can take a break and come and join one of those sessions as well. It’s quite optional. So, Saturday is that a full working day. Sunday is usually the day when you’re finalising your pitch, and you submit it at a deadline, and then you have an hour, or and hour and a half, or two, depending on the number of participants, for a pitching session in front of a jury, and then the jury goes in and deliberates, and usually by Sunday afternoon, or evening at the latest, we announce the winners.
HE: Do you think there’ll become more common with open source in the future, and what will that mean for society?
AB: I think it will, and I see a huge benefit in that, where we don’t hold on to our ideas. If you have a great idea, put it out there, and others can benefit from it.
HE: Maybe we can also start to talk about something that you call Hack the Crisis Sweden? You co-organised that event back in April in response to the corona pandemic. How did it go, and what’s happened since then?
AB: Yes. A little background about that is that it’s a really interesting concept, and it started off in March by a company called Garage48 that wanted to do this in Estonia, so Hack the Crisis Estonia. And as you all know, Covid hit us around that time, it was at the peak around that time, and everything changed, so a group of people thought: “Let’s do hackathons to try to solve the problems that people are currently facing.” And it became a global movement since then. Since then, more than 60 local hacks have actually been organised and sometime in March after that movement started, people in Sweden started thinking about doing the same thing: “Let’s do a Hack the Crisis Sweden.” This was OpenHack. We were talking about it, and it turned out that Hack for Sweden were talking about it, and then DIGG, the Public Government Agency for Digitisation also got involved.
HE: I thought you meant Dig.com.
[laughter]
AB: No. DIGG. Yes. We were all thinking about the same thing, so we basically joined forces, and brought this together in about two, three weeks’ time to basically solve challenges that everyone was facing right now in Sweden because of Covid.
HE: What could be examples that were addressed in Hack the Crisis?
AB: So many. We had three categories; save lives, save businesses and save communities. I think one of the most common things that we saw was: “How could we help people who are for example in a risk group, and people who are socially isolating, and who need to socially isolate for the sake of their health? How can we make their daily lives better and easier and improve, and come together to actually help them out?” That was just one of the examples. And then, off the top of my head, saving businesses. There are a lot of businesses that are struggling. From restaurants or from the service industry to you name it. So, how can we…
HE: I see that. But I have a harder time seeing how you can save them with for example an app or a webpage…
AB: Yeah, really? I can give you examples.
HE: Maybe? It’s probably my imagination. Yes, please.
AB: That’s the thing I find the most fascinating about this, is that you find solutions that you might not have thought about, and that’s where we all come together to actually build ideas and solutions to problems that we might not even know about, and we’re not even familiar with. For example, one of the winning teams in the category to save businesses is called Break Even, and hear me out, their solution is to basically display businesses and how they’re doing, and what they need to do to actually reach their break-even point. Break-even is when you basically break even with all costs. It sounds simple, but it’s about displaying that and in real time basically saying: “Okay, these are the amount of sales they have made now, and this is how much more they need to be able to break-even so they can survive.”
HE: So, if someone sees that in their local neighbourhood maybe they can choose to help a struggling business that they want to support and keep in the neighbourhood.
AB: Exactly. I’m sure that you would want to save your local bookstore or your local café from going down-under, from being closed down. I know I would like to. So, that’s one of the examples that we have.
HE: Cool. Do you think any of the work that you did back then has any impact now when we see the cases rising again in Sweden, and also in the UK for example, dramatically?
AB: Absolutely. From Hack the Crisis Sweden, which happened in April, we already knew at that time that we wanted to continue this and keep the work going. So, instead of just having solutions that were built, or purposed, we want to actually continue working to building them and actually implementing them. That was the main focus area because things have changed so much since Covid and will continue to change. Nothing is really the same or going to remain the same even next year. And we wanted to continue that, so we started a project here called West Coast Hack for Impact with a network of people who were mentors, who were partners, who were working together during Hack the Crisis Sweden, who were also interested in supporting the teams to go forward with implementing and developing their solutions. We’ve been working since then to evaluate: “Okay, which teams are actually still working on their solutions, and which solutions will make a lot of sense to develop and actually get out there during this Covid rise?” And even when the cases fall, some solutions are transferable and expandable to other scopes as well.
HE: Okay, so Hack for Impact was a bit of a continuation of Hack the Crisis?
AB: Yes, it was. It is.
HE: Did you see any specific challenges? Was it hard to find people who were still working on their solution from the previous project?
AB: For example, if I am to put it in numbers, we had about top 60 solutions. We had 500+ solutions that were developed during Hack the Crisis Sweden, and out of those, 60 came out to be highlights. And when we started digging deeper into: “Okey, which are the solutions that still make sense to continue developing, and to continue working on?” And also, the most important factor is the team, that actually developed it, to continue working with it, because that’s a key aspect right there. So, we need the right stakeholders to actually be working on that. It turns out that, for example we have about maybe 10 or 15 of those, that are still actively working on developing their solutions, and organisations are partnering up with other teams to continue developing them. It’s always like that. Not 100 percent of the solutions will go on to fruition.
HE: No, of course. Did you get any media coverage over this? Anything you remember?
AB: Hack the Crisis Sweden? Absolutely we did. All over GP. Some of the winning teams we had, for example, a 17-year-old who was in one of the highlighted teams that came out to be in the top 10, and of course just about the initiative itself. Since it was government supported there was quite a lot of coverage about it.
HE: So, you really felt it made a difference with the government support?
AB: Yes, definitively. I think it did. Just to have the government being involved on such a deep level, it really shows you that there’s leverage, there’s importance, there’s value in the work we’re doing. And it also gives us support, because as a non-profit it’s a challenge to try to do everything. As much as we would love to do that, but at the end of the day we need the resources and the network and the connections to be able to go on and to keep doing this work, and having the government involved has been really great, of course.
AB: So, you have these different things that are of course optional for you to join, but also when you’re tired of developing a solution or trying to find a way, you can take a break and come and join one of those sessions as well. It’s quite optional. So, Saturday is that a full working day. Sunday is usually the day when you’re finalising your pitch, and you submit it at a deadline, and then you have an hour, or and hour and a half, or two, depending on the number of participants, for a pitching session in front of a jury, and then the jury goes in and deliberates, and usually by Sunday afternoon, or evening at the latest, we announce the winners.
HE: Do you think there’ll become more common with open source in the future, and what will that mean for society?
AB: I think it will, and I see a huge benefit in that, where we don’t hold on to our ideas. If you have a great idea, put it out there, and others can benefit from it.
HE: Maybe we can also start to talk about something that you call Hack the Crisis Sweden? You co-organised that event back in April in response to the corona pandemic. How did it go, and what’s happened since then?
AB: Yes. A little background about that is that it’s a really interesting concept, and it started off in March by a company called Garage48 that wanted to do this in Estonia, so Hack the Crisis Estonia. And as you all know, Covid hit us around that time, it was at the peak around that time, and everything changed, so a group of people thought: “Let’s do hackathons to try to solve the problems that people are currently facing.” And it became a global movement since then. Since then, more than 60 local hacks have actually been organised and sometime in March after that movement started, people in Sweden started thinking about doing the same thing: “Let’s do a Hack the Crisis Sweden.” This was OpenHack. We were talking about it, and it turned out that Hack for Sweden were talking about it, and then DIGG, the Public Government Agency for Digitisation also got involved.
HE: I thought you meant Dig.com.
[laughter]
AB: No. DIGG. Yes. We were all thinking about the same thing, so we basically joined forces, and brought this together in about two, three weeks’ time to basically solve challenges that everyone was facing right now in Sweden because of Covid.
HE: What could be examples that were addressed in Hack the Crisis?
AB: So many. We had three categories; save lives, save businesses and save communities. I think one of the most common things that we saw was: “How could we help people who are for example in a risk group, and people who are socially isolating, and who need to socially isolate for the sake of their health? How can we make their daily lives better and easier and improve, and come together to actually help them out?” That was just one of the examples. And then, off the top of my head, saving businesses. There are a lot of businesses that are struggling. From restaurants or from the service industry to you name it. So, how can we…
HE: I see that. But I have a harder time seeing how you can save them with for example an app or a webpage…
AB: Yeah, really? I can give you examples.
HE: Maybe? It’s probably my imagination. Yes, please.
AB: That’s the thing I find the most fascinating about this, is that you find solutions that you might not have thought about, and that’s where we all come together to actually build ideas and solutions to problems that we might not even know about, and we’re not even familiar with. For example, one of the winning teams in the category to save businesses is called Break Even, and hear me out, their solution is to basically display businesses and how they’re doing, and what they need to do to actually reach their break-even point. Break-even is when you basically break even with all costs. It sounds simple, but it’s about displaying that and in real time basically saying: “Okay, these are the amount of sales they have made now, and this is how much more they need to be able to break-even so they can survive.”
HE: So, if someone sees that in their local neighbourhood maybe they can choose to help a struggling business that they want to support and keep in the neighbourhood.
AB: Exactly. I’m sure that you would want to save your local bookstore or your local café from going down-under, from being closed down. I know I would like to. So, that’s one of the examples that we have.
HE: Cool. Do you think any of the work that you did back then has any impact now when we see the cases rising again in Sweden, and also in the UK for example, dramatically?
AB: Absolutely. From Hack the Crisis Sweden, which happened in April, we already knew at that time that we wanted to continue this and keep the work going. So, instead of just having solutions that were built, or purposed, we want to actually continue working to building them and actually implementing them. That was the main focus area because things have changed so much since Covid and will continue to change. Nothing is really the same or going to remain the same even next year. And we wanted to continue that, so we started a project here called West Coast Hack for Impact with a network of people who were mentors, who were partners, who were working together during Hack the Crisis Sweden, who were also interested in supporting the teams to go forward with implementing and developing their solutions. We’ve been working since then to evaluate: “Okay, which teams are actually still working on their solutions, and which solutions will make a lot of sense to develop and actually get out there during this Covid rise?” And even when the cases fall, some solutions are transferable and expandable to other scopes as well.
HE: Okay, so Hack for Impact was a bit of a continuation of Hack the Crisis?
AB: Yes, it was. It is.
HE: Did you see any specific challenges? Was it hard to find people who were still working on their solution from the previous project?
AB: For example, if I am to put it in numbers, we had about top 60 solutions. We had 500+ solutions that were developed during Hack the Crisis Sweden, and out of those, 60 came out to be highlights. And when we started digging deeper into: “Okey, which are the solutions that still make sense to continue developing, and to continue working on?” And also, the most important factor is the team, that actually developed it, to continue working with it, because that’s a key aspect right there. So, we need the right stakeholders to actually be working on that. It turns out that, for example we have about maybe 10 or 15 of those, that are still actively working on developing their solutions, and organisations are partnering up with other teams to continue developing them. It’s always like that. Not 100 percent of the solutions will go on to fruition.
HE: No, of course. Did you get any media coverage over this? Anything you remember?
AB: Hack the Crisis Sweden? Absolutely we did. All over GP. Some of the winning teams we had, for example, a 17-year-old who was in one of the highlighted teams that came out to be in the top 10, and of course just about the initiative itself. Since it was government supported there was quite a lot of coverage about it.
HE: So, you really felt it made a difference with the government support?
AB: Yes, definitively. I think it did. Just to have the government being involved on such a deep level, it really shows you that there’s leverage, there’s importance, there’s value in the work we’re doing. And it also gives us support, because as a non-profit it’s a challenge to try to do everything. As much as we would love to do that, but at the end of the day we need the resources and the network and the connections to be able to go on and to keep doing this work, and having the government involved has been really great, of course.
“I think the driving force here is the fact that people are really interested in doing good, people are really interested in using their skills to develop solutions that can actually help others.”
HE: Is it hard to get people to sign up for 48-hour non-stop hackathons and maybe they do not turn out to be anything? It’s actually a bit like work, so what’s the selling point for an average student who might want to join?
AB: That’s what I love about this. The selling point is the fact that you volunteer your skills to make a difference in the world, and it is actually not that hard. One of the key things that we have focused on is the quality over quantity. We never, at least for the OpenHack hackathons, aimed for a 1 000 people or even 500 people. It’s about: “Okey, let’s get a 100 people and develop solutions.” It has worked really well so far. For example, for Hack the Crisis Sweden, we had 7 000+ participants, so you can imagine it wasn’t that hard. So, I think the driving force here is the fact that people are really interested in doing good, people are really interested in using their skills to develop solutions that can actually help others, and I am constantly impressed and amazed by the fact that we always get really, really interesting people out there who volunteer their time over a weekend and develop solutions.
HE :Yeah, that’s really cool.
AB: It is, yes.
HE: And when you say: “Get 100 people in a room”, I guess it’s also a virtual room nowadays?
AB: Yes, it is very virtual right now. Hack the Crisis Sweden was held virtually. We had OpenHack Gothenburg at the end of August, which was also held virtually. We have OpenHack Stockholm coming up in November. It is also being held virtually. So, of course, we are very Covid compliant.
HE: Yeah. I was just going to ask that, if you have any upcoming hackathons, and I think you mentioned a good list there.
AB: Yes.
HE: Is there anyone in particular you want to highlight? If you mention it twice, maybe people will remember.
AB: Absolutely. Recently OpenHack actually won a tender by the Swedish Institute to co-organise hackathons together, and that is really, really exciting for us because we’re seeing a global reach through this. So, there’s a couple of hackathons that are coming up, so stay tuned on our website and you will find news there very soon.
HE: And I guess these days, when it’s called OpenHack Stockholm, you could participate from Gothenburg as well, or?
AB: Absolutely. When I say: “Stockholm” it just means that it’s being organised centrally there, but of course, everyone and anyone is welcome. For Hack the Crisis Sweden we had people from all over the world. For OpenHack Gothenburg we actually had a team that was based in Sri Lanka.
HE: Wow. That’s really cool. So, would you say that hackathons are for everybody? What would you say to the people who are maybe too shy or insecure, or don’t believe in themselves enough to participate?
AB: I’m really glad you brought that up, because one of the things I make it a point to highlight is that hackathons are not just for coders or developers. They are, of course, a central resource, but at the same time you need the creative thinkers, you need the out-of-the-box thinkers, you need the business developers, you need the people who can pitch an idea really well, and actually take it forward from there. So, I would say anyone, and everyone, is actually welcome to hackathons. There’s no limitation. And my personal feeling about this, and what I’ve seen from experience, is that the teams that develop the best solutions are the ones which are the most diverse, that is diversity of gender, diversity of backgrounds, diversity of thought, diversity of experiences. So, yes, coders are great, but we need everyone.
HE: Nice. How do you match if you’re … I guess you can also join if you are a single individual and not a little group already?
AB: Absolutely.
HE: Do you then match people together, or how do you work with that?
AB: Yes, we absolutely do. In all of our hackathons so far we make it a point to support anyone who is looking for a team member, and we usually provide dedicated slots for doing that, so either a matchmaking session or when we used to do it in one room it could be a networking session where you could just meet others. Generally, you have challenges or cases that we provide that you can work on. You can of course bring your own. We can also do the match based on the type of challenge that you want to work on and so on. So, we support that completely.
HE: Did anyone create a website or app to organise hackathons in these strange times?
[laughter]
AB: There are digital solutions, yes. You can imagine now that we are doing it virtually, we need them more than ever.
HE: What impact do you think hackathons will have on social change going forward? Have you thought about that?
AB: All the time, because that’s what OpenHack is about, and I’ve seen from experience that it can have a huge impact. What we need is a lot more support in driving that impact. So, we’ve been really good at organising hackathons and developing those solutions and what we’re heavily looking at now is how can we take those solutions forward into building MVPs and to actually implementing them. That’s where I think we could use a lot more momentum.
“The teams that develop the best solutions are the ones which are the most diverse, that is diversity of gender, backgrounds, thought, diversity of experiences. So, yes, coders are great, but we need everyone. ”
HE: Have you seen any trends within the hackathon community that might spread outside of that community and become important to the outside world?
AB: Yes, for sure. I’ve been doing this for almost three years now. I’ve seen more interest within corporate organisations to conduct their own hackathons for the purposes of either driving innovation internally and getting ideas externally, and then driving that internally, and so on. So, I’m seeing a huge shift as well. It’s not just about social change, but it’s also driving internal organisation, innovation and building entrepreneurs, for example, and supporting your employees and others to be able to do things differently and to think out of the box and think creatively.
HE: Have you seen a lot of interest from different companies to participate and to partner up with you?
AB: Yes, I can say that we have. And of course, it’s always a challenge when you’re starting off to be able to find the right kind of people, but we’ve seen a lot of interest, and that is why we still have recurring partners over the years. We work with organisations such as Sida, migrations work at Arbetsförmedlingen, Red Cross, UNHCR, UNICEF. They have been really central for us, because we want to be able to help those organisations, and that’s how we do it, though our hackathons. Recently we have had Stena as well, focusing on recycling solutions. So, things like that are also where we see organisations coming in and supporting us.
HE: How do they typically support you? In some cases, I guess it’s to have an office to be in, but can it also be economically?
AB: Yes, anything and everything basically. It’s money, it’s office space, it’s digital resources, spreading the word, it’s about resources, sharing the networks and the cases.
HE: Any other example that you could lift that would just explain a little bit about what a typical highlight solution can be for you?
AB: Absolutely. I have different kind of examples. I wouldn’t say they’re all typical, especially looking at how Hack the Crisis Sweden was very specific and very special. For instance, a company called BrightAct built an app specifically to combat rising cases of domestic violence, and they’ve done really well. This is to provide the victims with all kinds of support. So, connecting with legal resources, connecting with health clinics, connecting with the police if needed. So, that’s really tackling a serious issue that has been coming up during these Covid-times. Apart from that, another one, which is I think is very relevant even beyond Covid, is called VoiceMed. They have a service where you can make a phone call, and if you think that you might have Covid, that you might have symptoms, they have sort of a pre-screening. They ask you to cough three times into the microphone, breathe deeply, and using AI-technology, they will map and see if you are at a higher risk of having the virus or not. They have actually gained a lot of momentum, so this is a very interesting team. They were in Hack the Crisis Sweden, as well as in another one, and they’re based all across Europe, so the team is very spread out. This is one of the really good examples of how people from different backgrounds coming together during a hackathon can build a solution. As you might imagine, this can go on to solve other problems for other diseases as well, and they’ve recently gained quite a good momentum as well.
HE: Cool. I am very happy to hear that there are so many ideas, and people actually execute them and get their solutions out there. It’s great that so many people want to help.
AB: This was, I think, very specific to Hack the Crisis Sweden, but I can also give some OpenHack-examples.
HE: Yeah, for sure.
AB: The ones that I’ve especially seen. One of the most common themes that we saw initially coming out of for example Arbetsförmedlingen or Jobdeck, was how do we reduce biases when applying for jobs, and how do we make that process simpler just basing on people’s skills? Imagine a challenge like that.
HE: That’s a very relevant question for sure.
AB: Yeah, exactly. And then we’ve had some really interesting organisations.
HE: What was their idea to come around the biases?
AB: Thinking back, I can recall one, which was about having a webapp, or a platform, where you answer questions and you don’t need to provide a CV.
HE: Yeah, that’s nice.
AB: And all the questions were all very relevant to just your skills. And then we’ve had, for instance, an organisation called Childhood that was dealing with the more sensitive issue on how we can fight the perpetrators of child abuse across social media. So, identify who might be doing that and actually prevent them from being able to do it across social media. That was a very heavy challenge back in 2018 in Stockholm.
HE: Childhood is already a big organisation?
AB: Yes, they are. They’re called the Childhood Foundation.
HE: Yes. Very encouraging to hear about all of these. So, if you think about typical participants in hackathon, like in OpenHack, are they there to help or are also many seeing an opportunity to maybe make it into a company and in the end make money off of it?
AB: I would say I haven’t seen many who were driven maybe by making money out of it, but definitively the aspect of helping and developing a solution, and also networking. Of course, meeting people from different backgrounds, meeting people from organisations. It’s a great place to be able to do that, to be able to meet likeminded people who are interested in spending a weekend solving solutions, and of course having fun at the same time. It’s a really fun environment. It can be intense. 48 hours is actually not that much. So, starting from just a completely new challenge to finding your way around: “Okey, what might be the solution?”, and actually pitching it in front of a jury at the end.
HE: Maybe we can also mention your website. Obviously, we list it by this podcast episode on our webpage, which is www.codic.se, so I can pitch in that as well, but how does a listener here find you?
AB: Just OpenHack.io. We have a very active LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook presence, and it’s usually OpenHack/coding for humanity. If you just search for us, you’ll find us there.
HE: And you exist all over the world also, except from Sweden?
AB: Well, we are based in Sweden, but as I said, especially with virtual hackathons there is no limitation on anyone who wants to join us. So, we have a nice presence now, which I’m happy about.
HE: Nice. So, maybe to conclude here, what are your personal hopes when it comes to the future of hackathons and the work that you do?
AB: So, with OpenHack specifically, my hope is that we get into a really good place where we can, ourselves as an organisation, support the teams who come up with these really cool solutions, to go further to developing and implementing them. That’s definitely going to be a focus for us, and I’m really hoping that we get into a position to be able to do that more than what we are now. As a non-profit you can imagine there are of course different challenges. So, that’s one. Another is that this movement continues and spreads, and that more and more people are motivated to just join in and use their skills to think out of the box and to solve problems and make a difference.
HE: Great. Thank you very much, Annaam Butt! And thank you for your work with OpenHack.
AB: Thank you for having me. It’s been fun.