In this blog post I brought up different viewpoints on the #HackTrafficking4Good, a social justice hackathon to stop sex trafficking that held in Boston in January.
Because, I couldn’t attend this interesting event, I withheld my judgment and invite you to read some takes on based on the Twitter and other social medias.
I’ve been to a few hackathons / innovation challenges and think they can be incredibly useful in prototyping ideas. The online criticism of “technological determinism” is particularly relevant to an issue with highly contextual challenges — perhaps better data visualizations are not what we need the most right now. The #HackTrafficking4Good, hosted by Thomson Reuters Labs, engaged policy makers, academia, NGOs (including the Polaris Project and Demand Abolition) and survivors who are working to combat human trafficking. This engagement addresses the question of how can we design WITH not just design FOR the “other”.
Yeah, seems this Boston hackathon created an space for all groups’ participation. However, I couldn’t find any reports about the summary of the sessions or any final report! On Twitters I found more negative opinions though.
Roya, I’d be keen to see those negative Twitter responses. I find hackathons to be pretty fruitful – especially when it’s not a commercially-oriented event. I attended a few for criminal justice reform when I was in DC and we developed programs to help expunge records and find jobs for returning citizens. I worry, though, that looking at disruption/tech as a panacea prevents us with grappling on the preventive side. How do we get to the preconditions? Who are those most at risk? Do you know if this hackathon addressed those questions?