Running a Blackathon: nurturing your tech career by celebrating diversity

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MARIAM: Yeah, I’m saying yes to it being shared with YouTube, we’re going to be live soon. [laughs] Yeah, we’re on, we’re on live. Well welcome, welcome everybody. Yeah- So I’ve got it double- I’ve just got to silence it so we don’t have double because it’s slightly behind on YouTube, so here we go. So now I am so delighted to welcome Made Tech to talk about running a Blackathon and I’m going to hand over to Flo. 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: Hello everyone, welcome to our – it’s not a Ted Talk but kind of like females talk, and we’re going to talk about winning Made Techs first ever, ever, ever, ever, Blackathon. So I’m just going to quickly go through agenda. So I’ll introduce my team, my lovely Made Tech team that are on the call with me today. We’ll talk about the first Blackathon, the projects that we did and what we learnt from it, we’ll also be touching on Blackathon 2024, which we hope you’ll all be involved in and, yeah, we’ll have questions and answers in the chat later on, right, so let me go forward and introduce my lovely team. 

So there’s me, Folora, I’m a software engineer, then we have Derek who’s also a software engineer, and then we have Seneca on the call as well, also a software engineer, and then we have our engineering coach, Dom, who’s also on the call and Ana from our wonderful marketing and events team. So, yeah, my journey is I actually came into Made Tech in 2022. I came in through The Academy and funny enough, also Seneca and Derek came in through The Academy. They’ll talk about that in their section. 

So who is Made Tech, you might be thinking like what do we do? So we’re actually a tech consultancy and we work with the public sector, so like government departments, local government, the fire brigade, the police, you name it, to just make technology that improves society and makes things better for you in the world, as such. As I was putting together the slides I found a very, very beautiful picture. So funny story. In 2019 I actually came to Made Tech’s office, Coding Black Females was doing an event here. I think it was like Code and Chill. In 2019 I did not know anything about coding, I actually came to have a good time. I came for food, I came for drinks, I came for enjoyment, right? Listen, Python to me that’s a snake. Ruby, that is a gem. Elixir I’m like, is that a type of cocktail, is that Hennessey drink? I don’t know. So it was really funny to me in the fact that I’m actually here on this side, as a Made Techer when I was there in 2019. Brilliant event, real brilliant event. 

So, yeah, our Blackathon, I think this is where I will hand it over to Dom but we did this, it was a two-day event in October last year and it was about celebrating Black progress in the UK. I want to show you the wonderful team that made this happen. So we have Dom who’s part of our committee. He’s our engineering coach. We’ve got Kayley, there’s Renee, who’s a software engineer, Derek, Miles our designer, so all the posters and I think – what are these things called? Stickers, Miles designed that. Seneca and me, and I will hand over to Dom because he essentially put out the call to the organisation and all the Black people came together to make it happen. So over to you Dom. 

DOM PATMORE: Thank you very much, Flo, my name is Dom, he/him are my pronouns. I’ve been at Made Tech coming up to two years now. Before that I’d been teaching in an educational space for a long time, and Black History month comes around, you know, and there’s always sort of – especially over the last couple of years – there’s been this thing about like how do we celebrate it, what can we do? And that’s good but on the flipside, like two things are important, like one, if we’re not careful Black History month can always be a source of re-visiting trauma of like what are the things that are not working, what are the things that are still difficult for us; and that’s not fun. I don’t want to do that. But also like being in a tech company I’m very conscious – and I’ve been in tech for a long time – I’ve been conscious like we don’t see a lot of ourselves in those spaces. If we go to a Hackathon there’s not a lot of people who look like us who are maybe carrying our experiences with us in building tech. And I was like, what would be like to have a Hackathon for Black people. Like what would it be like if you had a Hackathon of Wakanda kind of thing. 

So this idea about Blackathon was coming around and I was like, could we use tech to do something positive? Could we do something with tech to like celebrate Black progress? And that was sort of the idea and it was sort of the idea that I had like when I started at Made Tech, and I was like, I feel like this year I want to see what happens. So, like I said, as Flo said, I kind of put out the call, put out the Avengers Assemble, and we kind of started talking from there. And we went from here’s what we’d like to do, to here’s what we could to, to make it seem like, you know, to make to real. 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: My apologies guys, I was actually supposed to introduce my colleagues, Seneca and Derek, which I’ll give them the floor. So please guys, I didn’t do you guys justice, please introduce yourselves to everyone. 

SENECA SAUNDERS: I’ll go first. My name is Seneca, my pronouns are he/him. I am a software engineer with Made Tech. I started in The Academy, the cohort of October 2022, and previously I worked a lot in engineering projects, on project controls. I didn’t have very much, you know, of a basis in computing engineering or anything like that but I always was curious and Made Tech gave me that chance. And so being part of this Blackathon, I thought let me start, you know, showing those muscles I’ve grown in tech [laughs] over this period, and funny enough, Dom was my coach. So, I had to show him that- Do him proud and show him I can do something and so, yeah, getting to build out a project on the Blackathon was my way of doing that. Over to you Derek. 

DEREK BAKER: Hey, I’m Derek, my pronouns he/him as well. Yeah, like Flo said earlier, I joined through The Academy back in 2020. Yeah, 2020 I was in the cohort for 2020 and, yeah, and my previous history was all just facilities and office management. So I was a geeky guy but I wasn’t doing anything with code before until I joined The Academy. And, yeah, and the Blackathon was a great experience, and I will go into more detail when it’s my section as well.

SENECA SAUDERS: Okay, so this was our team and there was- This was our project, sorry, my team was Asha, who is not on the call or maybe she is on the call. Myself, Flo who is an engineer, Miles, one of our designers, at Made Tech and Adil he was a guest who joined us on the second day and he contributed very well to the project, at our team. So basically to talk about the project really quickly we, as Dom stated, you go into spaces in tech and you don’t see many faces like ours, right? And I wholeheartedly believe representation matters and so we thought of like, well what would it be like if you could made an app based on your dreams. What would it be like to imagine, to get your dream- To achieve your dream in an app that helps you do that. So we thought, okay- You could say, okay, I would like to be, for example, not being anything crazy but like a teacher or let’sstart off being a baseball player orsomething. What would that trajectory be? What would that look like? You know, where are the resources that you could go an tap into to start that journey? 

So a lot of people in the community Black and Brown community don’t really know where to do that but if our app could point them in that direction and we could give them that guidance, it’d be great. And not only that, if we can give them like- Because it happening nowadays, history’s being rewritten, all kinds of ways. If we can give them the basic history of people who have done that before they have, for example, a baseball player we can have a list of baseball players that were Black and Brown before they tried to get into that career as well; and let them know the way those people had to get into their careers, it would be helpful. Not only would they learn about those people but they’d learn about themselves as well, right? Then maybe we could also build a feature where it gives them like a suggested timeline. You could say if you’re doing this within a month or two, whatever, you would have reached that- You’d be that much closer to your goal. 

So, yeah, that was kind of the idea that we were going behind it and I must say that, as you can see in the photo there that’s like the preview of what it looked like but I mean the team that we had, we had such a great time for those two days of building it, and I would have wished we could have built it out more. Unfortunately we did not win, but I’m sure if we had more time we would have beat the competition. 

The next slide please. Yeah, I think this is just a photo of Asha who’s on my left, and that’s Flo on my right. Next slide please. And, yes, that’s us in the war room trying to basically come up with ideas. We had a lot of ideas. Flo is very creative. [laughs] As you can tell. And we just had to battle all of those ideas to come up with a solution. But the idea – we all had the same kind of spirit going forward, was that we really did want to make something that was impactful for our audience, and impactful for our users. I think we would have achieved that if we had more time but either way there’s still this year, right? We can do better this year. 

Next slide please. So, yeah, and this is when they were going to present for the- At the end. I wasn’t present for that but I heard they did a really good job in presenting our case. It’s a shame we got that trophy stolen from us. I’m not saying anything- 

Now I should pass off to Derek. 

DEREK BAKER: Hi, so we were the second team. We went in wanting to create something that was collaborative, so we decided to build a game similar to Guess Who? We called it Who done it? There were some other names that were thrown around but I won’t share those names in here, [laughs] but, yeah, basically wanted to create a game where instead of like Dom said earlier, looking at trauma and all those negative stuff. We’re trying to celebrate and look at those who’ve created things that you never really though was created by Black people and highlight those, and bring those to the top and to the forefront. So it was a two player game, we had a host. Sorry, it was a multiplayer came. We had a host who would be directing all the questions and then we had players who would be answering questions trying to guess who invented so-and-so. So one of those was like who invented CCTV and so on and so forth. 

The experience was – you can start flicking through the other slides now. The experience was fantastic, we had a great team, Renee and Kaylee are there. Renee who was a software engineer and Kaylee who’s a delivery manager. She definitely organised us and made sure we were able to get the ideas from our heads onto a piece of paper and then on to code; and we also had Ben there as well to guide us as a principal technologist to make sure we were not trying to stray too far ahead, or too far away from our central goal. This was my first ever Hackathon, let alone Blackathon, so I went in- I went in only to take pictures. I thought I was just going to take pictures because I was that nervous to be part of the Hackathon, and then somehow I’m sitting at a desk and I’m writing code. I don’t know how that happened. I blame Dom to this day, but somehow I ended up writing code. But, yeah, so- Yeah, great team, great experience and like Seneca said we, we kind of saw a little bit, big time won. So, I’m really proud of that. But, yeah, that’s it from me. 

Oh, this is the game being presented but, yeah, just stay there. So one side, so we didn’t have it fully working so we had to figure out like a little hackey way for it to be presented, so we ran up two incidences of the same game and pretended one was the host and pretended the other one was the player, and manually clicked through. So it wasn’t all connected. It wasn’t fully working but we managed to demo how we wanted it to work. But, yeah, that’s it, thank you. That was my Ted Talk. 

DOM PATMORE: Is this the part where I come in and talk about how I chose the winner? 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: Yeah, you need to explain yourself Dom. 

DOM PATMORE: [laughs] Okay, fair enough. So like I said the whole purpose Blackathon was to celebrate Black progress and especially 2023 was a really significant year because it was 50 years since hip hop, 70 years since the generation Windrush and 75 years of the NHS. And these are all spaces where Black and Brown people have contributed, you know, heavily into it. So I was like thinking about how we can celebrate that. So the criteria was how much does this app celebrate Black progress, how accessible is this app, like it’s no good if people can’t use it. What’s the impact? Like, you know, what is the general impact, and then like points for creativity. 

I’ll tell you why you were robbed, if you want to know, but it was really, really close and I really, really enjoyed both ideas. The reason why Guess Who’s Black? won is because there bit works. That was it. But that was the only, it just came down to like which one is closer in the fact of like you can actually use it. So that was good. But like both were great, I loved the idea about giving, Dreaming About Black to schools where people can see themselves as mathematicians, see, you know, them as doctors, as medical professionals and see like other people who have done it before. Know that they’re not alone, and find out the ways that they can move forwards. So, yeah, both are great, I’m still looking forward to seeing, like how we can make those real. But, yeah, that was the criteria that we were looking for. We were looking for celebration, impact, accessibility and creativity. So 

SENECA SAUNDERS: I still feel some shade in what you just said but I accept it. 

DOM PATMORE: [laughs] I said what I said. I stand by what I said. [laughs] 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: No, but respectfully shots fired on the call, I thought were- But like respectfully like I did have to say that Derek’s team, like worthy winners, it was a fantastic, fantastic like product and I also wanted to mentioned as well on the day – because we didn’t have tech stack, so we chose- I think everyone went with React, so I was not really very familiar with React and even though it was very competitive, do you know what, yeah, Kaylee was talking some crud on that day, you know? Like I still- I was like, what? Her team won so glory to her but, it was even the fact that like Derek and Renee, they’re a bit more senior than me and Seneca, so we were able to actually go to them for help because there’s times- Seneca [unclear 00:18:15] broke, like, you know the pictures in the war room, that was when it broke and we were like, what the hell are we going to do? Like we can’t show like a broken product kind of thing. The two Bens were there, who are principal engineers and they were really good, they helped usshape our idea, they kind of helped us like with how the code should go and explained use effects and stuff in React, which is- Yeah, so overall good day. 

DOM PATMORE: Well can I just say something? Can I just say like you may not have won but did we not all win for like generating something beautiful like this? Just going to say. 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: Yeah, and the friends we made along the way. 

DOM PATMORE: Right [overtalking 00:18:55] 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: Powerful friendships 

DOM PATMORE: [laughs]

 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: That’s you Dom. 

DOM PATMORE: Oh, is it me, okay cool. So I think one of the challenges we had is like we wanted initially to think about- You know, so actually one of the things that we wanted to do was, how can we use the Blackathon to include local Black businesses, how to include like Black students and things like that, and realised there were like some logistics in that. But we were able to like include like a few local Black businesses, so shout out to Earth & Roots and [unclear 00:19:33] and things for providing both snacks and also some of the rewards. I think the next iteration is going to be like, how do we have an even bigger impact on a sort of wider thing, like can we use this thing, can we reach out to schools, can we include other people along, and what does that space look like? So I think definitely more and like how do we stretch out that wider reach. Like how do we continue celebrating- How do we continue challenging, how do we let other people who look like us know that tech is a viable career, that they can see themselves and we need their voices in this space. 

MARIAM: Ah, that’s so fantastic. Yeah, while we don’t have questions in the chat I wanted to feedback, you know, [laughs] Marley is saying that she feels like she’s catching the tea, and [laughs] she’s on a whole different continent, she’s told us she’s nudging tea; and Owen, I don’t know whether you want to make your point as well, you can step on and do that. And of course questions. 

OWEN: I was just saying that they were saying like, oh, we didn’t want to release a broken product, it’s like software houses release broken products all the time. Like that’s imposter syndrome stuff, don’t worry about it, it’s all fine. 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: And do you know what, on that note like Owen, love him, he’s from our workplace yeah, we also had to let people know about- You know the volunteers, you see the allies were allying in our company, you know? When I tell you like the crew got together like helping, volunteering, setting up on Friday – I wasn’t there but I heard it was a lot. Like getting the space ready, we had a fire marshal, like it was so amazing, like the Blackathon, like the whole like kind of like organisation came together. I’d say for like Blackathon 2024 like Rory, our CEO, and Chris, open up the purse man, open up the wallet, drop some change so we can make it bigger and better, yeah? And I was saying this to the whole world. So we’ll have a company update next week, I’d love to know what budget you’re putting this at. 

[everyone laughing] 

MARIAM: We’ve got to thank you first- [laughs] That’s great. Seneca? 

SENECA SAUNDERS: Yeah, just to follow-up from what Flo said, it was great to have this event not only for us by us but also to know that in Made Tech, it’s not performative. The actual allyship is really. I mean you – like as she said, people stepped up and they were there and there wasn’t this feel of it was, mmm, just to score points for DEI, it felt like folks really care and they want our- They’re, you know, working towards our winning in this space as well. I don’t know if this is across the tech industry, but this is my first gig, so this is a really good start, if this is it, you know what I mean? I’m really proud of those who stepped up to help us out. But the way we walked away from that event, I don’t know about anybody else, I was buzzing. I mean I couldn’t wait to do more, and to be out there more for- To bring along the other. The young ‘uns, you know? Like we say back at South, you know, to get other folks to come in. And I really enjoyed that day. It can’t be said any more than that, you know? But, any questions? Anybody else? 

MARIAM: What I really like about your format as well is even the way you’re approaching it, that- You know, this presentation, is you’re already just kind of opening it out to think about the planning for the next one. Think about who you’re talking to. Actually, Amalia was asking for a bit more explanation about Made Tech Academy, what it is and what they do? 

DOM PATMORE: I’ll jump in and answer that because we’ve actually- It’s interesting, this is the first week, like The Academy itself has morphed into what we now have as apprenticeships. So initially The Academy was a 12-week boot camp to get people really focusing on people who are either looking at changing careers, might be coming from a secondary career, who are interested in looking at tech but normally wouldn’t get a chance anywhere else, and get an opportunity to practice. And so they would spend, you know, initially 12 weeks with usto learn not just about technical things but, you know, consultancy skills, because Made Tech is a consultancy. So things like psychological safety and wellbeing, what is power [unclear 00:24:18] and responsibility, you know, how to- Self-advocacy. Advocacy, working with others. So, those are the things that we would look at and then from there we would place them on deliveries or projects that Made Tech would actually work. 

It’s actually funny because I’m actually sitting here with the current cohort of apprenticeships listening, and they’re hearing me talking about this and they’re watching this which is super awesome. So it’s almost like it’s come full circle. But we’re moving into apprenticeships, and apprenticeships, the format is a bit the same, instead of it being 12 weeks though it is now 18 months, an 18-month process with a qualification at the end, recognised qualification at the end. So it’s going to be more of the same just with more structured learning involved. We’ve closed applications, we don’t know when we’re going open up applications yet but please check on our website to find out when those are available. You do have to be in the UK to be part of that, for now. But, yeah, if you’re interested do keep an eye out and look out for that. 

MARIAM: We should do a session on that, maybe and talk a bit more about and your deadlines because I’m sure they’ll be people in our community that are really keen to know more. So that sounds great. And, yeah, there’s a really good question that you’re probably kind of wanting to think through is, what would you improve on the next Blackathon? 

DOM PATMORE: Oh. I think one of the challenges is like how could we include more people? I think that’s what I- How could we welcome more people? I think one of the challenges, like we- I think it was great, we had a great start but I think that is definitely something more of like we had a really great experiences amongst ourselves, and that was super awesome, how can we get more? And like I say, how do we get more- And I think part of that is logistics, part of that is budget but like, yeah, how do we build this out more? And I think also like how do we make this regular? Like it’s great having it for Black History month but I’m Black all year, so how do I make that happen? 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: I think what I would say as well is like I would like to see more- You know because our [s/l car 00:26:39] committee is very engineer heavy, so I’d like to see more of people of colour across our organisation getting involved because you know what, yeah, having- Derek’s team had Kayleigh, she was a real assets- Nah, she was a real asset because she comes from like is it a delivery principle background-? 

DOM PATMORE: Yeah. 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: So she knew how to manage- She managed her crew like a tight ship, like they are- So there was value in her having been there. Miles was a value to us. He was a designer, there was points- He was designing a website because we had the Spotify playlist, do you remember? So the music was flowing, we had like the drinks, we had the food, Miles was just going crazy, we had to say, “Miles, calm down, do you know we’re like junior engineers, what you’re building-” Like, do you know what I’m saying, we’re not principals yet, do you get me, but it was just nice to see- Because I never knew thingy-bob before, so just even seeing how he put the website design- We did not do it justice, did we Seneca? Like, to the- We didn’t do Miles justice, did we? 

SENECA SAUNDERS: But we tried. 

[laughter] 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: So definitely we need more internal people stepping up and I think I’d change- Definitely a neutral judge, a neutral judge. 

SENECA SAUNDERS: I know without biases, but we’re not shouting at anyone right here. To follow on from Flo, I think what she’s adding is that diversity in the group helped a lot, having those diverse experiences would have I think propelled the project a lot more further. But, yeah, it’d be great if we had people who were planning the event coming from the other departments in the business and if they are there, and maybe, you know, help us come up with better ideas. And going back to what Owen had asked, if there was anything that didn’t go smoothly in the setting up of, or organising, I can’t remember if anything didn’t go smoothly. I think Dom may be able to speak on that, but it felt like we were lucky, it all just happened the way we wanted it to happen. But maybe Dom could probably talk more on that.

DOM PATMORE: I would say really helping, like really narrowed down our expectations because like Isaid, have you still got a [s/l trouble 00:29:04] board, we had a whole bunch of ideas and it was like we can’t do this. But I think making it really small, and I think it was really like can we make this successful as we can. But I actually want to shout back to the rest of the planning group because, you know, we met regularly, you know, you were really helpful in highlighting any blind spots or potential things that were missing. So that really, really helped, so I want to- I appreciate you, you folk for like being part of there, helping me go like, oh, yeah, I really didn’t think about that. There was a lot of planning behind the scenes to like make that successful, so I appreciate you. 

SENECA SAUDERS: We love you too Dom. 

DOM PATMORE: Okay, thank you. 

[laughter] 

SENECA SAUNDERS: Even though [unclear 00:29:46] 

DOM PATMORE: Actually I would love, I would love to have someone from like Coding Black Females be a guest judge next year. I was kind of 

MARIAM: We can set that up I’m sure. 

DOM PATMORE: Yeah, I was hoping, I’d love that because then someone else can get yelled at. 

MARIAM: [laughs] They get all the flack. 

DOM PATMORE: Yeah, yeah. 

MARIAM: I thought it was quite funny that you were going how did you judge? How long ago was it? 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: -I’m like, yo, and also we could get kind of like female members involved like come- Because, you know what? Going to – we call it a Blackathon but it’s a Hackathon, is a really, really, really good way to hone your skills, you know? Because being amongst other engineers, like seeing what Renee coded, what Derek coded, watching Asha code, like Ben, like principal technology people, it was so cool because it sharpens your skills, like, oh, okay, I would not have maybe wrote it that way but this actually a more efficient way to build it. So it really helps with your skills and presentation as well because we have to present at the end, regardless if your app is broken or not, you still have to go up to the front, talk about your idea, you know? So 

MARIAM: Do you want to talk a bit more about the actual tools you used because you mentioned Figma, you’ve mentioned React a bit. Do you want to talk a little bit about what was used over the time? 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: Do you know what, I want to hand it over to Derek because I feel like his team was more proficient. [laughs] 

DEREK BAKER: Well- 

[laughter] 

DOM PATMORE: [overtalking 00:31:26] it was sound, I’m just going to say that. 

[laughter] 

DEREK BAKER: Nah, ours was a really simple step, it was all just- It was all React so we kicked it off with React, we planned it all on Trilo, so we had tickets on Trilo that we were managing but everything was done on React. I find it, erm, this morning in preparation for this talk and the amount of errors that are in the terminal [laughs] when we liked kicked it off is ridiculous. But, yeah, it’s a very, very simple stack. 

MARIAM: Fantastic, but did you do any kind of UI or UX stuff before using React or did you just dive right in there?

 

DEREK BAKER: Because we didn’t have the pleasure of having a designer, we dove straight into the code and we thought about that- But all that stuff was an afterthought, we were like, oh, actually we have to make this look nice as well, so then we started following up- Borrowing pictures from Google images on there. But, yeah, we didn’t have a designer but we tried. 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: You even did user testing, didn’t you? Because I remember, I saw you in the 

DEREK BAKER: Oh, yeah, I forgot about that- So we printed out- So when we were coming up with the idea of the game, we printed out hard copies of the game basically and tried to play it out with people who were in the building at the time and see what they thought about the mechanics of the game, to try and figure out the mechanics of the game; and that then informed our decision making when we went into going into code. So, yeah, we did use some user research. Again, that’s thanks to Kaylee who isn’t here but, yeah, she ran a tight ship and she made full sure we were doing our job principles. Looking at Agile all the way. 

MARIAM: Yeah, so you were doing Agile with paper like? 

DEREK BAKER: Doing, yeah, we were doing Agile with paper. Every day Agile, every day Agile. 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: Like Seneca ran a tight ship with us, you know, like he kept us on job and do you know what, yeah, there’s a moment as well that I remember where it just wasn’t working and my guy was dedicated to fixing this leak. I think something in the code- Remember the timeline wasn’t working, Seneca, and he would – by brute force he just fixed it and I really was like, wow. Because, me, I wanted to give up. I was like, do you know what, it is what it is man, people can use their imagination and we’ll talk through it. So, yeah, that was really good. Even like seeing how- Like, Seneca, you know how you were able to debug the code as well, erm, was really good so 

SENECA SAUDERS: Yeah, I think what you meant to say is determination and Google, is always our friend as engineers. I learned that on projects, that look you don’t go in there knowing anything, you go in there asking a lot of questions and everybody pointing you towards Google to get those answers a lot of times. So, yeah, with me being determined but also I think it must be said that we had a good vibe in our team, so everyone was determined to get things fixed and done and also we didn’t want to look, you know, a fool when it came to presenting; because I wasn’t going to be around and I wanted to make sure we did have something to present. So it was all really good. Good vibes, determination and Google. 

MARIAM: Okay, lots of search. Search and find. So, what you’re saying is the importance of having a good project manager on your teams when you’re having to go for these- When you’re kind of like in competition, keeping everybody on track? 

SENECA SAUNDERS: Yeah, project managers and delivery managers, I think we must say they are worth their weight in gold because you don’t see the direction you’d be going everywhere, everyone would be lost basically. But I guess with my background in project controls that was helpful, you know, but again I think my team was- We were dedicated to each other, we wanted to win, you know? We feel like we got bamboozled but we, you know 

MARIAM: Bamboozled- [laughs] 

SENECA SAUNDERS: -we went for it. 

MARIAM: Yeah, fantastic. 

SENECA SAUNDERS: We not hurt about it just so you’d know, I just need to put that out there. 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: There was a lot of banter on the day, you know, listen like I said Kaylee was chatting like that And it doesn’t help that how our offices’ sides are glass, so you can see in. Yeah, so like 

SENECA SAUNDERS: It leads to them spying but that’s 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: Yeah, it was like friendly competition, it was very nice and also as well like there was even a point where Dom sitting turned into like a counselling office where we’d just come in to talk about- Because that was another thing I enjoyed actually on the day was like we’re able to like spill the tea on our careers and get career advice because I was on a project that wasn’t, you know, but then I was able to talk to my colleagues about it and get some tips and some advice. Even like speaking to the two Bens about like what is the trajectory for like a software engineer in our company, and stuff. Like the different levels, what’s the difference between an associate, a mid, a senior, a lead, so on and so forth, so it was also like- Yeah, go to Hackathon to get the tea man, there’s things I can’t say because, you know, what happened in the Blackathon stays in the Blackathon. 

[laughter] 

MARIAM: Is there more you could tell us about this swatting bugs because there’s kind of like quite a few comments on there, so Amelia, as a new coder the knowledge that swatting and stack overflow is heavily overused even by experts is so encouraging and hashtags swatting bugs forever. [laughs] Any more about swatting bugs. 

DOM PATMORE: I mean I think the thing isit can be very easy especially if you’re used to looking at like YouTube videos, you know, these people who are like I’m going to teach Java Script or I’m going to teach you Python, and people are just like- You know, they’re moving from one thing to the other and it’s like they never have to ask, they never have to pause. It can make you feel like if I have to ask questions, I’m not good enough. But the reality is like there is so much information, it is really hard to keep that in your head. And in terms of; those people have been practising for a while, so that’s why they don’t have to do that. 

So like give yourself space and grace, like it’s okay not to know, it’s okay to go find out something. It’s less about having that information right at the tip of your fingers and knowing more about where to look for it. So it’s okay to ask questions, you should feel okay to ask questions. Asking for help should always give a positive outcome, that’s one of the things that we’ve actually starting saying in chalet projects, and like that’s important. You should never feel ashamed for like going to look up something. I had to do that today because I forgot a command, and I was like we’re going to look it up because I can’t remember. It’s fine. 

MARIAM: Yeah, we can never say that enough and I’m so glad you’ve said that, you know, it’s not about knowing it all, it’s knowing about how to operate when you don’t know and how to find and search. But I suppose what’s different about Blackathon is that you’ve got this short timeframe and you’ve got to get it done on time, and you’ve got to get your presentation in. How did you plan time for your presentations?

DOM PATMORE: Let’s tell the truth. 

DEREK BAKER: There wasn’t much planning done for the presentations. [laughs] I think up until the final minute we were still trying to put things together and then we were like, we need to do a presentation. [laughs] I don’t think, from my team’s perspective, yeah, we did not have any time ready for presentation. 

SENECA SAUNDERS: And I had to leave early so I just left my team with a wing and a prayer and wink, you know, good luck y’all. And they did a great job. 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: Yeah, we were freestyling like even- I remember like you know Dom came to the front, it’s like computers down, come on, come to the main area, it’s time to do your presentation. Even then we had our computers in our hands still trying to make changes and stuff, it was like, yeah, there was- There was no planning we just literally, vibes, vibes, like literally just- And God’s grace. 

Also, Seneca, yeah, I have a question for you, yeah? Why don’t you like chocolate cake because right it was his birthday on the second day of the Hackathon, yeah, me and Dom we walked 10 minutes to the shop. Imagine in central London walking 10 minutes is like walking from here to Spain, yeah, we got you chocolate cake, we sang you happy birthday and what did you say, “Oh, I don’t like chocolate cake.” We’re like so you don’t like nice things? Like, explain yourself. 

SENECA SAUNDERS: As our audience now have discovered we’ve got great vibes, [laughs] so I’m just going to put this out there, if you knew me you’d know I don’t like chocolate but it’s not about- It was the thought that counted and I appreciated that cake very much. I’m glad that I have the family that I do in Made Tech that thinks about me during my birthday, made sure that I didn’t feel far away from my family because I was away from my family that day to celebrate my birthday. But I got a beautiful card and I got a beautiful cake and I’m sorry that I had to disrespect y’all by not eating chocolate but it was really nice and I appreciate that. [laughs]

MARIAM: Ah, even made time for cakes. [laughs] In your precious timeframe. That’s so great. And, so kind of there’s still these two questions, is there anything else you’d do differently and what else- I know you wanted to get more people in, what’s your plans for getting more people in? So what would you do differently, is there anything else? 

DOM PATMORE: Start earlier, probably, that’d be probably be one, maybe start earlier and I feel that’s really generic, but I think- [pause] I don’t know, that’s kind of tough one to answer. I think I think the other thing that I think- Urgh, that’s a weird sentence to start with, so come back to me because I think I think is not really a proper construction of words. I think for me the hardest part was will this work. Part of me was, er, I was worried that we had Black History month, there’s a whole bunch of staple things that people do for Black History month and that is fine but I worried that people having a technical angle on it was something that maybe people may not be interested in. Now that I see that there is appetite and people are, you know, it is inspiring and invigorating, I think- I’m very interested in like how can I keep this momentum continuing. So it’s rather like, not necessarily how about the next one, but like as I said before, how do I make sure this happens maybe not every day but more than once a year. That may or may not answer your question but 

MARIAM: Yeah, no, that’s a good answer, you kind of touched on that before, that’s really clear. And then just to kind of finish now so that everybody can then get back after their lunch breaks, to this question of how are you going to let more people know and how- Kind of just tell people where to find it or what, you know, how they can get involved or get, spread the messages? 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: Do we have a slide, a get in touch slide? 

MARIAM: There you go. 

FOLORA DUANG-AROP: Ana to the rescue. I don’t know, what do you think guys- Sorry, what was the question? That’s how you know I’m hungry.

MARIAM: Yeah, yeah, just kind of how are you- You were saying about wanting to get more numbers and get more people involved; and I just wanted to make sure people knew how to get in touch. 

DOM PATMORE: Yeah, I would love to like- First, if this is inspiring to you and you want to know more please email us, that’ll be super awesome. I think all of us are on LinkedIn so please reach out to us; and be like hey, we’d like to see more. If you’d like us to be- If you’d like to see this event in your own workspace, like please reach out to us, that’s one way of doing that. If you’re like, how about- Have you thought about doing a Black History month, you know, we’re interested in ideas, we’re open to collaborations. Yeah, just give us a shout. I think letting us know that you out there find this inspiring, are interested in like supporting it, like helps us made the case that we should do more of this. 

MARIAM: That’s brilliant, thank you so much and good luck for the next one because this has been so much fun, I really got that vibe from you all and I’m sure, you know, everybody watching it, joining us today and everyone that’s going to be watching our video online, yeah, it’ll be great and thank you very much. So we’re going to close out for now, thank you. 

DOM PATMORE: All right, thank you so much. 

MARIAM: Thank you, bye, bye. 

DOM PATMORE: Bye everybody.