Miss Emma Joughin1, Mr. Quinten van der Leest2, Dr. Tomas Remenyi2
1AURIN, Melbourne, Australia, 2Eratos, Richmond, Australia
Biography:
Inspired by the endless potential of data to assist in explaining and discovering the unknown, Quinten aspires to further his knowledge and expertise in data-science. A self-motivated learner with creative problem solving and quantitative skills, Quinten thrives in an environment where he is allowed to push the boundaries of what is possible.
Emma is an enthusiastic and motivated project management, communications and sustainability professional with 8-years experience working across academic, government and industry sectors leading end-to-end delivery of multifaceted projects. Confident in establishing excellent working relationships, Emma operates with passion, values and a commitment to personal and professional development.
Abstract:
In March 2024, AURIN, Arup and Eratos joined forces to deliver the Urban Innovation Data Hack 2024, supported by data owners and software solution providers across federal and state governments, academia, and industry. AURIN is a national digital research infrastructure providing urban and regional research data and tools. AURIN identified a need to improve the collaboration and connections across the urban research community, while also seeing a need to improve awareness of available data and tools. We chose to trial a hackathon as a vehicle to address these issues and partnered with Eratos to deliver secure, streamlined data solutions. The hackathon's key goals were: to promote new data, software and platform solutions; provide an opportunity for participants to skill up; to encourage collaboration; and to provide an innovative and engaging networking opportunity for partners and participants. On all counts it was a success. In this presentation we will discuss the key barriers we encountered and how we overcame them as we organised the event. Barriers included: creating secure data sharing environments; onboarding participants and provisioning their computational resources; managing participant teams; and meeting partner contributor expectations. We will present innovative solutions we employed to overcome these challenges, and review how these were received by participants and the contributing partners. For those considering organising hackathons for their communities, we will present some tricks for new players, lessons learned, and some recommendations.