Eventornado is built for people thanks to whom new innovative solutions come to life. In this series, we interview the awesome people behind the organizations that are hosting hackathons on the Eventornado platform.
Organizer: Earth Hacks
We are an environmental hackathon organization.
We have a multi-tiered approach to harness the power of hackathons for climate and environmental action, focusing on student hackathons, organizational hackathons, and environmental justice in tech programming.
For student hackathons, we work with student organizers to incorporate environmental challenges and workshops into traditional computer science-focused hackathons - because computer science students are unfortunately likely not learning about these issues in their classes - or to work with them to create new entirely environmental-focused hackathons from the ground up.
We also treat this as an environmental leadership opportunity, equipping them with skills to take initiative on environmental projects in the future, because they've already done it.
For organizational hackathons, we focus on partnering with organizations to solve small-scale, focused challenges that will have tangible outputs.
There's a slight tradeoff with creativity, but this type of hackathon focuses on harnessing the projects that come out of the time-intensive format.
Lastly, our environmental justice in technology resources focuses on what environmentally just tech and tech practices can look like, as well as highlighting the complete lack thereof.
Most of this work right now is focused on creating educational and creative resources around how we can integrate environmental justice principles and technology, aiming to drive a culture shift in the tech space from being completely exploitative and harmful to restorative.
How or why did you get into organizing hackathons?
As an electrical engineering student, I used to attend hackathons to be able to learn things outside of a classroom environment.
While there, I realized that the hackathon innovation format is very compelling - bringing smart, motivated people together to work in a time-intensive format, usually resulting in working prototypes, which is super rare.
As an engineering student, this was powerful because it normally takes months to get an idea off the ground, or even past the first round of review.
So why not apply this time-intensive innovation format for the most time-sensitive issue we’ve ever faced as a species - climate change and the resulting environmental degradation that comes with it?
While a single hackathon might not completely change the world overnight, it seemed like a huge missed opportunity to not harness the hackathon innovation format as a form of climate action, so, I started Earth Hacks with my co-founders Bhargav and Jade to do just that.
Please share 1-2 events that will highlight your experience
Envision 2050: Designing Sustainable Futures in collaboration with Arizona State University’s Global Future Labs was really cool.
At this event, we explored the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and tried to imagine what would happen next.
Students from across the world came together to propose projects ranging from proposing new SDGs, such as broadening the definition of gender equality, to projects that assumed the SDGs had failed and provided blueprints for alternatives, to those that showcased examples of what the world could look like in 2050 for our descendents if the SDGs in their current format succeeds.
Describe one time using the Eventornado platform that made a difference for you
In the CARGO hackathon and for Envision 2050, Eventornado was beneficial for us and our judges.
We had several subject matter experts who were not necessarily familiar with hackathon judging, or who were not digital natives, so we wanted as few clicks as possible in the judging process to make it streamlined for them and be respectful of their time.
We had people from very varied backgrounds so it was extremely helpful to have a platform where the judging process is streamlined.
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