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