I want to do programming + online hackathon

Red Hackathon Online 2020 Venue Innovation Hub Hiroshima Camps has only 3 people.

Does Zoom have a future "company" shape?

The market capitalization of the video conference "Zoom" (Zoom Video Communication inc) is said to be larger than the total of the top seven airlines (source). Earnings for the first quarter have just been announced, with sales up 169% year-on-year to $ 328.2 million, used by up to 300 million people worldwide each day.

However, as for the news of the IT industry, the company's market capitalization exceeded 9 billion yen in September 2019, half a year ago, and it was already a big topic. It's been about two years ago that Zoom has been getting a lot of attention as a typical pattern for this kind of company to break (my article = "Zoom Room" instead of "Zoom Meeting" at that time). ..

One of the reasons for Zoom's hit was the connectivity with the "video conferencing system" that was introduced by large companies (high compression, stability, and unlike Skype, it was of course usable if even the URL was sent. But). However, Zoom is popular now in 2020, not because of regular meetings with "overseas branches" or meetings with top "overseas customers" that large companies have come to for video conferences.

This is because the average office worker started using Zoom for "ordinary work". Zoom is also known for being an explosive hit in the field of education by making schools free to use services from kindergarten to high school. I heard that Zoom is now used for job interviews with local credit unions. Zoom is used in TV news (as easy as a phone call), and there are also Zoom-style dramas. These are because the new coronavirus was the trigger, but the groundwork was ready.

Is it a digital replacement for what the founders of Skype have been doing, such as "I realized I had a PC rather than a phone in front of me"? Probably not, what's happening in Zoom right now is to replace something extraordinary.

For example, isn't it possible to say that the "seats" of a company are beginning to change to Zoom? It has become a "meeting room," "bar," and "television camera," and perhaps Zoom is beginning to erode some of the functions of a "company." I think this all-purpose Sakagen is similar to the "iPhone". These killer products can really change the times.

It is a test of how long it will take root after the Korona-ka, but it is very interesting to ask the essence of what is happening with this. Because it seems to open a new page for people-to-people relationships. I would be happy if people could communicate properly with technology, and I think that the set of communication will be the "knowledge" of the new era.

Regarding the change in the relationship between people, I was interested in the article "The form of" encounter "and" sex "that changes with the new corona" (MIT Technology Review).

According to the article, many dating sites have started to use the service by uploading self-portrait photos and selecting them by users, or by meeting with text-based information (basically). It hasn't changed since the time of the movie "You've Got Mail"). However, the "dating in real space" beyond that is now "dense contact".

So how did a dating site in the United States come out? Suddenly, a "video party" of 10 to 15 people will be held, and after that, interested participants can connect by emailing the management. From the beginning, he showed an unexpected development of trying to show each other as vivid as possible.

This is not a simple application such as "Girl's bar" becoming "Zoom girl's bar". I find it interesting that the dating site paradigm has been turned upside down like a joke. Isn't there a similar shift in other parts of the world?

There were things that were not so predicted at the beginning of the spread of the new corona infection, such as the reduction of bullying due to home study, the increase in financial transactions such as FX due to the spare time for remote work, etc. There is. That could happen with business models and the mechanisms of the world.

Hackathons with the theme of new corona measures were being held all over the world

The Global Hack is an online hackathon involving participants from 98 countries around the world.

It is the "hackathon" that the real space has a big meaning in our IT industry. Dozens of young men and women gather in one venue to create themed apps and services, usually over a couple of days.

I think hack + marathon = hackathon is a really good name. It is "time and place" that dominates the place, and each participant abandons his usual social background and competes just like a marathon. Compared to "time", "place" is not so strict, but it seems that there is no doubt that it is established by real space.

So, can we somehow hold this hackathon "online"? It becomes a story. If you look it up, you can see that many online hackathons on the theme of new coronavirus infections have been held overseas since March.

"Hack the Crisis" (March 13-15, 2020) is planned by Estonian startups. With the participation of Czech antivirus software company Avast and chess master Kasparov, more than 1,300 people have achieved more than 30 results in three days. The official website of "+ VERSUS VIRUS" held in Switzerland from May 28th to 31st} states that it was "the largest joint online event in Swiss history".

How did such an online hackathon take place? Looking at the material of "Hack the Crisis", it is as follows.

■ March 13, 2020 (Friday) 15:00 Idea collection started (Guaana) 15:00 Registered in Slack 18:00 Kick-off webinar (Greetings from Minister of Trade and Information Technology Kaimar Karu) 18:00 Idea collection finished. Team registration for problem solving 18:30 Team announcement on Slack. 18:30 Introducing Mentors and Agenda 10:00 Checkpoint 17:00 Checkpoint ■ Sunday, March 15, 2020 10:00 Checkpoint 18:00 Final Webinar / Deliverable Announcement

This timetable is not very different from the hackathons we know. "Guaana" is a platform for online hackathons. The only big difference that comes online is that it can be globalized. The word "Hack the Crisis" became one keyword and spread in a chain to 67 hackathons around the world. And "The Global Hack" will be held again from April 9th ​​to 12th. 12,000 people from 98 countries participated. Over 5000 ideas have been submitted.

Participation in "The Global Hack" has been expanded from posting ideas to Slack at a fixed time as before, to tweeting with the hashtag @theglobalhack on Twitter. By consolidating it in Slack, ideas and teammates are solidified. It is a procedure of registering a team in "Devpost" (of course, it may be a team from the beginning). Devpost is a service that can be said to be a hackathon platform that connects companies and developers, but if you look at the site, you can see that many "online hackathons" are currently being held!

"Red Hackathon Online 2020"

Online hackathon Zoom screen

When I started to hear the word "online hackathon" in Japan, I heard the story "I'm going to do an online hackathon." "Red Hackathon Online 2020" will be held on Saturday and Sunday, May 23-24, 2020. Organized by Hiroshima Prefecture and Hiroshima's technology community HCMN (Hiroshima MotionControl Network), the theme is "a service product that we want to start anew when" the day when people can go out and get together with peace of mind "comes." That is.

The Red Hackathon has been held seven times since 2014, and its base is Hiroshima Prefecture's Facility Innovation Hub Hiroshima Camps (I also rented the venue last year to hold the HMCN and hackathon. I know it because I received it). Apart from being run there, participants, judges, and spectators like me are all literal online hackathons, remotely (see photo at the beginning of the article).

I wanted to know what the actual online hackathon would look like, so I watched the team building in the morning of the first day on YouTube, and on the second day, I kindly visited the Zoom after the announcement of the results at 15:00. By the way, although the hackathon was sponsored by Hiroshima Prefecture, 13 of the 42 participants were from Hiroshima Prefecture, and the others were 9 from Tokyo.

Regarding "Red Hackathon Online 2020", the following two materials are detailed. In particular, Mr. Genki Oishi's "Online Hackathon Gleaning", which I am indebted to at work, also identifies issues through the two-day online hackathon. A seminar called "Dev Rel Meetup in Tokyo # 53 ~ Online Hackathon ~" will be held on July 1st, but Mr. Oishi will also be on stage, so if you are interested, please visit.

Red Hackathon Online 2020 Advance Information / Hiroshima Prefecture / HMCN Online Hackathon Gleaning / Oishi Genki

By the way, the actual "Red Hackathon Online 2020" was held with the concept of following the conventional hackathon procedure. This looks almost the same for online hackathons held overseas, such as "Hack the Crisis" in Estonia. Mr. Daisuke Esaki, a Hiroshima prefecture employee, will be the moderator, greetings from the organizer, introduction of the judges and management, and explanation of the theme by Mr. Akihiro Motoki of HCMN.

Input of theme explanation by Mr. Motoki. There were many useful topics such as being able to consult with a doctor on a smartphone 24 hours a day at a startup in Ibaraki prefecture.

So far, it's like watching a typical hackathon on video. However, from here onward, it will not be the same as a hackathon in real space. Team building, a very important phase of the hackathon, used Zoom's breakout room and Google Sheets and Google Slides. Borrowing the above materials, it is as follows.

Ideas that seem to be the clearest part of management, how team building works

A breakout room is a mechanism that allows you to divide a Zoom meeting into up to 50 sessions. The set of tables and desks assigned to each team in a normal hackathon corresponds to the breakout room. After the official team was formed, there were two teams, one for engineers and one for designers.

The management team started studying tools from mid-April, more than a month before the event, and about a week ago, they held a Zoom trial session for the hackathon. It feels like the preparations have been made carefully, but the team building part was not always smooth from the idea generation. This is something that you can't understand until you try it, and it feels like you're stuck in a less essential place. I will borrow this as it is briefly summarized in the above-mentioned material.

Idea generation and team building were also the parts that left issues

As a tool, there was also a "Comment Screen" in which text flows on the shared screen like Nico Nico Douga, and it was used for plunging into the pitch of ideas. It is software that can be said to be a hack in itself that characters flow on the PC screen of the person who shares the screen and appear on everyone's screen.

Once the idea and the team are solidified, it's just a hack. Zoom and roundz are available as tools for the team. "Roundz" is a service that advocates a virtual office, and it also has functions such as knowing the status of friends and push talk (it seems convenient for teams of acquaintances to talk to each other with one key).

Usage of the comment screen during the idea pitch

Red Hackathon Online 2020 was a good hackathon with a lot of works and comments, as well as the overall schedule. Even after the end, Zoom was up and running, "I feel airy when I'm doing it at home", "The only salvation is that the bed is nearby", "The chat time after the end is good", "Online and offline" There were conversations such as "I wish I could do it together" (this was also in the judge's comment) and "I thought there was something I couldn't understand unless I was face-to-face, but I felt it was close online" (without permission). I made a note). You can see what happened on the day on this YouTube channel.

The worry about what happens in an online hackathon is that you can't easily go to the desk next door or chat with an acquaintance like a typical hackathon. There is less noise than in real space. There is no pizza or beer to eat together. The online hackathon has only a screen. Can it sustain the tension of the participants? I think that will evolve from now on. To be honest, I'm not a participant, so I don't know another part.

It looks like a work announcement. The awards are the Audience Award "Gaya Doll", the Encouragement Award "Traveler!" (High school student team!), The Jury's Yuichi Kurita Award "Teleport Dresser Pochi de Pa, Clothes Move Instantly!", Kula Xu Award " "Tele-Tele-Work", "Sake x Pairing Bot". The picture is a game with the theme given in "Face Bato" that I like. Is there a market like web conferencing games?

My personal interest is that the tool may determine the upcoming online hackathon. It's like the game changes depending on whether it's a dedicated machine, a mobile phone, or a smartphone. Zoom's breakout room is a valuable feature, but moving participants to the room is a manual task of the organizer. In this area, "remo.co" that allows you to freely move around the room and spatial.chat, which has the concept of "distance", seem to be interesting. If the "screen" is more important than the "face" of the participants, "Discord" will be useful.

I heard that the red hackathon also considered that it could be used to come up with ideas, the whiteboard "miro". miro looks like a hackathon because it's close to paper, post-it and pen. However, as mentioned above, Google Spreadsheets and Google Slides were used for ideas and team building. As an example of using miro, I heard that he was very active in "participating in athletic meet remotely" and in a company's full-online training for newcomers. This is not just the theory of communication.

So, looking at the cases of overseas online hackathons, it seems that "Zoom", "Slack" and "Google Docs" are the three sacred treasures of online hackathons. Depending on the number of participants and the environment, the Google spreadsheet used in the Red Hackathon may be Slack for idea entry and discussion. SNS plays a big role as an entrance rather than the operation of the entire hackathon, and the tools used within the team should be familiar to each. So I plotted the tools and services used in the online hackathon.

Online hackathon three sacred treasures Ver.0.01. For the time being, just by arranging the ones that are on the topic, it seems that some axes can be created. For example, video tools include "conference", "communication", and "event".

Along with Zoom, Slack, which seems to be indispensable overseas, is a tool that has gained popularity over the last few years. It was introduced in "Weekly ASCII" in 2014 when Slack was released to the public (see the figure below). As I mentioned here, Slack is more open and newer than its predecessors, with more work online (Zoom has a lot of similarities). Since it is possible to link with other services, this may be the point of development for hackathons.

An introductory article about Slack in "Weekly ASCII". It is said that the system used in-house by the game company where Keita Takahashi of the PlayStation game "Katamari Damacy" is located has been turned into a service.

By the way, does an online hackathon not upset the paradigm of a dating site in the United States? When it comes to hackathons, the people involved may be a little more complicated. What I was a little excited about when I got a message about three days ago was that I would like to study a certain 3D modeling software remotely using Zoom.

Mitou Foundation is openly soliciting "After / With COVID-19 Countermeasure AI Utilization Special Frame" as the second AI frontier program. We are looking for themes in the non-digital field (medical x AI, education x AI, construction x AI, etc. are given as examples, but not limited to this) regarding issues caused by social changes caused by the infectious disease of the new coronavirus. The idea is to provide resources and advice, including funding, for research and development to solve the problem. The deadline for applications is 17:00 on Thursday, June 11, 2020. For details, please see the announcement site.

The intellectual creation base "Umekita Grand Front Osaka Knowledge Capital" next to Osaka Station, where I often help, has opened a new facility "SpringX". For more details, please see the official website, but it is a group of several practical studios (which should be called a lab), and it also has a communication function, "The value of the school is" finding friends "". In that sense, the content is suitable for the "super school" that the base advocates. "Super School ONLINE" has started in advance, and on June 6th (Sat) and 13th (Sat), 2020, the bioscience series "What is the new coronavirus?" schedule.

Another related issue is the new coronavirus, and an online seminar entitled "People's Life and Values ​​Redefined by the New Corona" will be held from 19:00 on June 22, 2020 (Monday). The monthly event "Emerging Technology" to be held on weekday nights of "MIT Technology Review [Japan Version]", which not only spreads the infection in the United States but also provides detailed information on the new coronavirus from a medical, pathological, and sociological perspective. It will be done as # 17 of "Nite", and I will be the moderator. Click here to apply.

Satoshi Endo

Senior Researcher, Kakugawa ASCII Research Institute Co., Ltd. After working as a programmer, he joined ASCII Co., Ltd. in 1985. After working as the editor-in-chief of ASCII, he has been in his current position since 2013. Kakugawa ASCII Research Institute conducts research and consulting on the lifestyles of people in the age of smartphones and the Internet. Hackathon will serve as a judge at NTT DoCoMo, TechCrunch, Asahi Broadcasting Corporation, etc., and will also be in the position of the organizer. He actually wants to take this opportunity to participate, as he has never been a participant. Although he is far from programming, he is also the author of free software such as "AMSCLS" (fully used in LHA) and "Thumb Pyun" (thumb shift keyboard emulator). His books include "Modern Programmer's Evening" (in the name of Hortens S. Endo, ASCII) and "Computer Shop Fighting".