Starting 2012, a hackathon has been held every two months by the g0v jothon working group, and there have been over 40 g0v hackathons for the entire g0v community. Each time, roughly 100 people attended. Participants are free to propose projects and find willing and able collaborators at the event, facilitating civic tech projects that can benefit society as a whole. 

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic early 2020, with the safety of all participants in mind, g0v jothon contemplated the possibility of an online hackathon for over 100 people using existing digital collaboration tools. At that time, only commercial options were able to accommodate such a large group. Non-commercial options were mostly unable to even maintain a stable connection, let alone facilitate smooth collaboration. 

In March 2020, g0v jothon formed the “jothon online” taskforce, which used the open source collaborative cross-platform video conferencing tool Jitsi Meet as its base to created a set of new online event platforms. In the “Lobby’ of the platform, all projects, meetings and participants could link together seamlessly by virtue of co-existing on a single page. At the same time, everyone could access all collaborative documents from the hall. 

This platform was shot right through with g0v’s collaborative spirit. We brought together many open-source tools from the back-end to the front-end, which together allow participants to communicate and collaborate real-time online. The platform also has live streaming capabilities. 

Source: Bess Lee, Ichieh Chen (g0v jothon)

The g0v jothon working group took the g0v Hackathon to the cloud, where it became the ‘g0v Online Hackathon’  which aimed to ensure that the g0v community could still maintain the spirit of “joy, autonomy and collaboration” even  online. In March and May of 2020, the two ‘g0v Online Hackathons’ featured participants from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and even the US, a total of 18 proposals and 10 lightning talks, attracting over 3,000 livestream views on youtube, and the g0v Slack had over 400 simultaneous users. The event homepage was visited over 23,000 times. 

After the ‘g0v online hackathon’, the “jothon online” task force continued to use the force of open source to support the GCTF (Global Cooperation and Training Framework), the Presidential Hackathon, and the NASA Space Apps Challenge @ Taipei, with each event held an opportunity to improve the platform. For example, the “ask for help from a specialist” function was added during the Presidential Hackathon, andthe specialists didn’t need to install any additional software. Instead, they could directly respond to the call on the platform and then use video call, text or screenshare functions to interact with others. 

At the g0v Summit 2020, g0v jothon organised a full-day schedule at the Tainan Museum of Art. To ensure that both in-person and online attendees could interact in real time, the ''jothon online” task force made use of its experience gained over 2020. In addition to the seamless livestream, the task force collaborated with volunteer interpreters, allowing real-time interpretation to be transcribed into captions on the livestream. Such tools enabled the 33 speakers coming from three different countries and speaking on nine panels to overcome the barriers of time, space and language ensuring a meaningful and rewarding day at the summit.

Source: Bess Lee, Ichieh Chen (g0v jothon)

Tech teams from around the world are all working to innovate the landscape of online collaborative tools. The upcoming mission for the jothon online task force is to ensure that the quality of simultaneous collaboration remains stable. In addition, the task force is hoping to develop a 2D RPG map and an online exhibition space to allow people to reproduce a greater range of space and environment in an online context.  

COVID-19 has increased the physical space between people, but it has also given people the space to reconsider the meaning of interaction. Through innovation of online collaborative platforms, we have been trying to more faithfully reproduce the depth, diversity and delicacy of offline interaction digital platforms. We believe that these interactive tools developed during the COVID-19 pandemic won’t disappear as soon as the disease does, because society only moves forward. 

This is the spirit of open source projects: allowing others to build on existing foundations while adding new tools and strategies to the mix as they move towards a better future. 

References:
jothon online members muyueh, ichieh and tmonk’s presentation at the g0v Summit 2020: “How Jothon Online was Built”
jothon online platform
Streaming tools “Jo Jitsi Plus”

Have you read?

♦ Localities Connected through Communities: g0v Summit 2020 in Tainan, Taiwan
♦ Why Is Taiwan’s Major Civic Hacking Conference Moving South?
♦ Open Government for Digital Health: Taiwan’s Virtual NHI Card

Translated by Sam
Uploaded by Penny Chiang