{"id":28061,"date":"2019-10-14T14:34:45","date_gmt":"2019-10-14T13:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digileaders.com\/?p=28061"},"modified":"2019-10-14T14:34:45","modified_gmt":"2019-10-14T13:34:45","slug":"the-hacks-back-north","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digileaders.com\/the-hacks-back-north\/","title":{"rendered":"Hack the North 4.0 is back\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hack the North 4.0 is back!<\/p>\n

Looking ahead to Hack the North 4.0 taking place 21 – 22 November, I wanted to reflect back on what I enjoyed about Hack the North 3.0 and why you should\u00a0sign up!<\/a><\/p>\n

The first time I went, I knew I\u2019d found my people. 2 days; and a room full of passion, enthusiasm and a willingness to try something new to fix a problem.<\/p>\n

Hack the North 3 – putting health and wellbeing at the heart<\/h4>\n

The theme for my first DWP hack was connecting digital health services, which was something close to my heart, having previously worked in NHS Digital urgent and emergency care. So imagine my delight when I got the opportunity, not only to go to my first DWP Digital hack event, but to co-host it too \u2013 my excitement levels were off the charts.<\/p>\n

Not only did I get to work with talented, creative minds, but I got to meet lots of new and inspiring people as well as catch up with familiar faces. One of the new faces was James Parker, who was my engaging co-host for the weekend. James and I had great fun supporting the teams, coaching through some tricky group decisions, and facilitating some excellent talks.<\/p>\n

Some of those talks came from our sponsors; James Osgood from\u00a0MongoDB<\/a>, Saul Cozens from\u00a0dxw<\/a>\u00a0and Amul Batra from\u00a0Northcoders<\/a>. All 3 helped frame the hack before the start. We also had a scene-setting talk from DWP Jobcentre Plus colleagues that helped attendees understand the environment they would be trying to solve problems for.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed watching ideas develop from Friday afternoon and being refined at multiple stages throughout the weekend. I was also most impressed to see teams out and about doing user research with real people in the city. It was real user-led design and agile on a micro-scale, as they used their findings to identify where they needed to change direction from their initial ideas and assumptions.<\/p>\n