The hackathon about hacking meathttp://arstechnica.com/business/2012/12/the-hackathon-about-hacking-meat/Developers and engineers who participate in hackathons are familiar with the rules. An organizer brings programmers together to work on either an existing or new problem for a mutually agreed upon amount of time, usually 48 to 72 hours. In that time, developers might break up into teams or work alone. But once they have understood the challenge presented to them, they sequester themselves to write code. After hours of sleeplessness and caffeine overdoses, the teams present a demo. These showcase working prototypes, rudimentary applications, or higher-fidelity interfaces on occasion. On the other side of this marathon of coding, developers walk out exhausted. But often, they leave with code that can solve a problem.
So what happens when this playbook is directed at something offbeat—like meat production and sustainability?
The challenges facing the meat industry and its consumers are vast: food safety, reducing methane emissions, improving meat quality, and helping both industrial and small local farmers among others. And all went according to plan: the hackathon model delivered unexpected results when applied to these problems.
The event brought six challenges from various figures in the industry. For fans of cutesy puns, these six organizations were labeled the “steakholders” and their roles resembled those of traditional clients (at least at first). The group included the Vermont Processing Group, Applegate Farms, Consumers Union, Food & Water Watch, Grace Communications, and the Environmental Working group. Representatives from each worked with three self-selected developer teams for 48 hours.
In the first phases of Hack//Meat, the participants shook hands, met representatives of the six organizations, snacked on foods that included—you guessed it—meat, and rolled up their sleeves to do the work.
“This was very different from hackathons I have seen before,” participant Will Turnage told Ars. Turnage is vice president of technology and invention for tech firm R/GA. He's also an organizing member of the Food+Tech meetup. “It threw me for a loop. I was expecting a traditional hackathon. In traditional hackathons, you get there, teams form and work fast. You demo, then you’re done. In this case, we were tackling other people's problems. We spent two days just learning what problems people had. No hacking, no coding. That couldn’t happen until we talked to the sponsor and learned about their issues.”
Turnage was the leader of the winning project team. His group worked with the Vermont Meat Processing Working Group (an organization bringing meat producers and processors together) to focus on challenges with the meat and food system at large.
Turnage's team won the top prize: $2,500 and marketing services to help continue their work with the Vermont Meat Processing.
Though this hackathon turned out to be less “hacky” than the traditional events, Turnage thinks the end result was better than simply pitting engineers and developers against each other like gladiators. They left with plenty of ideas, some common goals, and still a few unanswered questions.
Let me paint this scenario into a most simple picture. Several intelligent minds, computer programmers, engineers, etc, come together to brainstorm some issue at what is known as a hackathon. When they arrive, they discover that a representative of the multi-billion dollar meat industry has put together a list of efficiency problems that the meat industry is experiencing and has asked these
"great" minds to put together some innovative and ingenious solutions. They do...and one team even wins $2,500 dollars for increasing the efficiency of a multi-billion dollar concentration camp.
So...Did nobody stand up and leave the room in disgust? These are supposed to be intelligent people...did not
one of them baulk at the sheer audacity, the outrageous callousness behind what they were being asked to participate in?
"Hello, Mr. Intelligent Computer Programmer, we're just the kind of people who "shove the electric probe in the ass" of baby cows and don't know a for loop from our anus and never will...but can you please help us "shove" more "electric probes" up the asshole of millions more baby cows per day than we're doing right now. Thank you kindly Mr. Intelligent Computer Programmer."
"Oh yes, Mr. Probe That Baby's Asshole, we lurrrve that tasty meat, we'll work on improving the efficiency of your concentration camp for free...hell, just a couple of dollars and we'll all "shake hands" and "snack on" sodomised babies. It's human progress after all. Isn't it wonderful to be alive.
