Women Technologists and Creatives Unite
Written by Erica Stanley
Women Who Code Atlanta is partnering with Women Interactive to host Hack.Solve.Create: A Creative Hack Event series for Women. The events are designed to bring together women creatives and technologists in solving tough social issues for local area nonprofits while exposing more women to the world of hackathons.
When Women Interactive co-founder, Ashia Sims, contacted us about partnering for their 4th Annual Creative Technology Festival, we knew this could be an amazing alliance. Women Interactive was interested in changing the format for their yearly celebration and exploration of the space between creativity and technology. This year they wanted to make innovation the focus of the event. And what better way to bring innovation to the forefront of the event than by transforming it into a hackathon, where we can direct the ample skills of the many talented women in attendance to solve real issues in our community. At Women Who Code Atlanta, we’ve been carefully gathering our resources to host our first all-women hackathon. Partnering with Women Interactive has helped us test the waters for interest and engagement of the larger women in tech community in Atlanta.
We both had a few ideas about how we wanted to distinguish this event from the typical hackathon. We were concerned about having only one day to ideate and hack out viable solutions. So we divided the event into a 2-part series, with one event devoted to ideation and the other event devoted to hacking and pitching. We knew this event could be the first hack event many in our audience have attended. So we are navigating them through the process with a guided hands-on workshop during the idea session and a great group of mentors on hand at both events. We also wanted to give as much time as possible to fleshing out usable solutions. With more than a week between the idea session and the hack event, teams are encouraged to work on their ideas during this time. This is one of the few hack events we’ve participating in where it is not only allowed, but strongly recommended, to come to the hack event with working code.
The first event in the series is an interactive idea session where we’ll mingle, network and brainstorm technical solutions to social issues in our community. The idea session will include a 90-minute workshop, led by Atlanta Director, Erica Stanley. The workshop is inspired by Google Ventures’ Design Sprints and was created to help teams build and refine their ideas so that each team leaves with a hack-ready solution.
The culminating event in the series is a creative hack event. We’ll finish hacking the ideas we refined during the interactive idea session. Then we’ll come together to pitch our solutions for a panel of judges with deep knowledge and ties in the social entrepreneurship space.
From Women Interactive:
The 4th Annual Women Interactive Creative Technology Festival will depart from its typical format of workshops, film shorts and keynote speakers to host Hack. Solve. Create: A Creative Hack Event powered by Women Interactive and Dr. Ayoka Chenzira of Spelman College’s Digital Moving Image Salon.
We’re inviting women who work in all aspects of the technology, business and creative industries to join us for an afternoon of collaboration, networking and creation as we work together to solve a challenge facing our community.
Register for the 2-part event series below:
