A global hackathon to take on the coronavirus pandemic Marko Russiver

[Applause]

hey

hey helen hi thank you so much for

joining us i know that this is a very

busy time i should tell everybody that

when

when we first talked you were like yes i

can take a call at 3 a.m

and i was like what now and you’re like

no that wasn’t a typo so

thank you i realize you are working 24 7

at the moment

um first of all how are you how is

estonia doing how are you doing what’s

the status of the country

right now i think we’re i think we’re

actually pretty okay

um there’s not much panic around what’s

happening and and people are pretty much

understanding uh the concept of social

distancing

though um i think you know

obviously it’s not a place for anyone

likes to be right now

but uh it’s not the worst so you guys

are socially distancing you’re staying

at home

there’s kind of outside work

or i i think we’re actually like more

like physically distancing because i

don’t think i’ve been ever talking to so

many people

as i’ve been in the last three weeks

like so

uh yeah what we’re doing we’re staying

home

uh it’s not like fully mandatory we can

go out but

uh but it’s it’s a common understanding

that rather stay home

great great so talk to us about

pack the crisis in estonia tell us what

happened tell us some of the

extraordinary outcomes that we’ve seen

already from it

i think one of the one of the most

extraordinary things uh

is uh yeah of course what what came out

of it but but uh

but what i love about it is how it’s a

combination of of government and ngo

and and then a startup working together

so uh i think like three

three weeks ago or so i’m lost track of

time to be honest

um uh we i had a phone call from

uh celebrate the stoners uh mick weinig

who’s uh

escalated is like a really bleeding as

innovation agency in a stone

uh for the government uh so he called me

and said hey you wanna you wanna

champion would you to kick off

a virtual hackathon and i was like what

are you talking about but yes

so uh and then also garage 48 got on

board with

with kaizen who’s a fantastic person and

and

um so we ended up also training it

and and a carriage 48 is a hackathon

company they’ve been doing it for 10

years but they haven’t done it virtually

so their knowledge

of how these things um should be done

has been super

invaluable for us uh well everyone after

what

after all of this came out so

we had six hours and we kicked it off uh

in six hours we had

uh the yeah we had the icity minister

kai margaret was an ex-skyper

actually one of the original estonian

mafia you know

gangs we call the startup founders dad

in estonia um

and he was opening the panel we had over

the next 48 hours we had 1

300 people jumping in building amazing

infrastructural

and so forth solutions that for crisis

that we’re facing now and

uh example of like what were some of

those applications or things that got

built

yeah absolutely uh one of my absolute

favorite ones is

is a very simple thing it’s it’s a super

simple thing

it’s a chatbot but uh when you when you

understand

uh the implications of how much it

actually helps people

it’s kind of crazy uh so it’s a chatbot

about the information about the virus

but

it will be how to utilize for

governmental communication afterwards

too so there’s in like in about three

weeks there’s been

14 000 queries and talks with it uh

and that’s for estonia is a lot for a

small place all right

so um also um

what’s really cool about this is that it

understands slang

like when when the kids talk to it you

know it understands what

uh what the kid is asking and also it

and the main thing that i really really

adore is that it actually leaves the

hotlines open for the elderly who can’t

use the chatbot so it’s kind of

funneling the conversation so everyone’s

informed there’s no panic

you know it’s it’s it’s used in every

governmental uh website right now

it’s a media site so it’s really easy to

access for people

um so another another thing i really

want to mention sorry

is uh is a

is a company now i think um called share

force one

uh we all know that employment is a big

issue around the world right now because

it’s all getting locked down it’s all

changing a lot so what they did they

built a platform where

companies can share uh workforce with

each other

with so they don’t have to let people go

so

this is i think this is ingenious and

these things came out

uh well there’s over 30 different

solutions five of them one

funny thing though uh so uh but it’s

what it’s called

it’s called the chatbot is called surah

it didn’t win the government liked it

the government reached out to it later

on and said we need this

so yeah yeah so with share force one so

just so i’m understanding so the idea

would be that someone

an employer who suddenly has a ton of

employees

with kind of nothing to do because of

the shutdowns

can kind of advertise them and then like

how does that actually work

who’s going to make use of it it builds

uh as much as i understand it’s been

really flying fast right now right so as

much as it’s partnering up companies

between themselves

so uh for example if you have a hotel uh

that doesn’t really

uh have much people to do right now and

they can partner up with a delivery

company for example

i see yeah i see so the people because

people aren’t staying at hotels or

traveling to them there’s a whole bunch

of work

there that can be kind of reapplied

people they don’t lose their jobs right

and and they went they went as far as

actually like building out the

legislative part of it it’s you know

it’s there use it

so that’s what’s so interesting to me

about especially about the global hack

too is the fact that this is really it’s

not about just estonia you’re really

thinking kind of

globally about this one of the things

that has been heartening about this

crisis has been the scientific

collaboration and has been

scientists really sharing information

and just doing a really

bang-up job of kind of breaking down

barriers that’s so much harder when

you’re talking about

policy or you’re talking about

international affairs but what are you

seeing that actually means that some of

this

some of these ideas can be shared

globally

oh well that’s the thing uh after we did

our hackathon in estonia we wrote down a

playbook actually carrots 48 people

wrote it down

and we kind of helped along with what we

knew um

and uh so after that

it’s been three and a half weeks i think

or something there’s been

40 something countries holding over 52

hackathons

meaning that it’s getting really

international but all of these things

are regional as they should be you know

europe communities need solutions so we

figured we need to escalate this to do

a next level where we get all these

people to work together and we also need

all the governments to get work together

to work together with the teams

because what some of the best hackathons

we’ve seen are the ones where the

government is involved just like ours

was

um so what we’ve been doing for the for

the global hack

is uh is we’ve been building a separate

slack

where we’re onboarding government

officials from all over the world

our our government is doing it our civil

servants who know other civil servants

and so

it’s very informal and they have been uh

describing the challenges that they have

locally that should be solved

uh during uh the global hack that’s

starting

tomorrow that’s so interesting so the

problems that people are solving are not

the ones that they kind of invent for

themselves but this is really coming

from

need it’s both it’s both interesting

yeah yeah

yeah yeah it’s absolutely what’s cool is

like you’re not showing up to solve

government problems but you’re so you’re

showing up

getting a full understanding what is a

problem and then

you start building solutions for how for

it however you want it it can be

non-technological it can be a movement

it can be a social thing it can be a

hotline for

like example i’ll give you an example in

italy hack uh there was a red cross

uh uh employee a volunteer i think sorry

uh who set up a hotline for elderly

people so they could just you know

talk with each other things like that

it’s not high tech at all it’s it’s

human we’re

solving this for humans right i love

that

and so i think speaking to that that

means that

you are looking for everyone to get

involved this isn’t just about

coders or technologists this is really

about every everybody can show up and

everybody can play a part is that right

absolutely it’s i think there’s a lot of

people out there right now who are

trying to find a way how to contribute

in you know time of crisis how to put

their expertise in play

there can be a lot for example

researchers scientists marketers there

can be

people with with some knowledge about

managing teams for example

they’re all welcome all of these skill

sets are very much welcome

so i know it doesn’t go live until when

does it go live

tomorrow tomorrow i honestly don’t

remember

it’s on thursday yeah i don’t remember

the exact time like it’s been crazy

is there a challenge that you are like

you saw come in and you were like oh my

god that could make such a difference

yeah um we have

we have some uh missions of united

nations involved they have set up their

missions

regarding solidarity uh they really

enjoyed the european commission

is is really looking heavily into um

how to what is what’s the new education

going to be

like this is this is interesting right

uh estonian government uh is trying to

prevent the the uh drop of an employment

rate in youth

so there’s there’s a lot of like pretty

broad

uh challenges but uh what’s gonna happen

is that when we see

different ideas popping up solving these

things from different

angles then there will be people coming

to them and trying to help them with

data and access and so forth

i love that and i saw that there’s prize

money for this i think it’s

120 120 000 euros

oh yeah you’re missing yeah it’s 140 now

so what i’m saying is that it’s

constantly growing and actually

i found out something just before this

that i really want to say

um one thing i had not figured out since

since now

uh is like who really started it and

and i found out and he has not confirmed

it to me

but i just want to shout this out that i

realized that one of our people

from the core team who has never said a

word about being the

author of the idea callum uh

he i think i was the original guy was

like we should do a hack

and thankfully you know these are the

heroes uh he’s in the front line

fundraising right now

so um that’s why i remember they really

need to shout him out for it

thanks so

there’s prize money but there’s also a

bunch of kind of big-time investors

involved in this is this is maybe one of

the side effects of this actually like

employment do you see businesses being

launched as a result of this

absolutely uh it’s that’s how it’s been

uh you know this hacks 48 hour gary tax

have been done

for 10 years now and there’s been some

crazy awesome companies coming out of it

in this region and it’s not a one-off

thing like you kick it off for 48 hours

you let it fly you you really work

yourself through exhaustion basically

feeling these things with the team and

and that’s just your mvp that’s your

first button to bust

push basically the actual work comes

after so a lot of these uh

big names that are there like bradfield

and and

i’m not sure if miss bradfeld was the

one who confided but he was he’s

he’s a really cool guy who joined um so

we have ray hoffman

sam eltman we have an astronaut samantha

christopher

who who just sent her greetings in um

and thomas and mccoy who i absolutely

adore he’s

and it’s appreciated here and there’s so

many people who are who are like

heavily into investments and heavily

into connecting people to the right

people they’ve been doing this for us

since day one when we kicked these

things out

um and i see that there’s a lot of

silicon valley a lot of

european uh vc and angel eyes on it

this is i think where the next googles

and amazons are going to be built

and the key reason is is all eyes on

them and secondly

access they will have all the access

they need to build their solutions right

and i think yeah that’s amazing how

amazing

good luck i just wanted to close and i

will hand over to chris and to corey but

you wrote this really beautiful piece on

linkedin about the motivation

for doing this um and maybe this is just

because i’m sentimental these days but i

just wanted to quote

we hack because we’re all living in one

small village in this new world

we’re not european american african or

asian

we’re human and we will hack because we

humans

love can you just give us like the 30

second motivation that is driving you to

do these

24 7 days nights weeks

that’d be like giving your life to this

like what’s driving you what keeps you

awake apart from coffee

um api is saving lives it’s that simple

we’ve been talking with facebook we’ve

been talking with zoom slack we’ve been

talking with a lot of people around the

world

a lot of big companies no one cares

about their brands right now

everyone’s coming in uh without any big

you know

salutes or unfair they’re providing

they’re helping

take care it’s that simple they love

the companies who are gathering the

people who are gathering the

organizations the leads

they really care well listen marco we

are all

cheering you on good luck can’t wait to

see

everything that comes out of this um but

thank you for everything that you’re

doing

thank you for having me