Transcript from Edge Talk on 4 December 2015

[Robert.Uk.Captioner is Live]
OLLY BENSON:
Good morning, everyone. We are pretty much ready to go. We are waiting for a couple more people to
join. We will just let them do that. We will start in a minute or so to make sure everybody who wants to
be has managed to get onto the chat. We will start in a minute.
OK. I think everybody is here who wants to be. Welcome to Edge Talks for December 2015, my name
is Ollie Benson and I am your host today. We are talking about hackathons and hacking. We have
some great guests lined up, Perry and Zoe will be our main speakers. And there will be people who
have taken part in hacks around the country.
It is an interactive session. There are many ways to get involved, use the chat box in the bottom right-
hand corner to contribute throughout the seminar. Raise your hand if you want to join in the
discussion, we will have plenty of opportunities throughout the various talks for you to join in. If you are
on Twitter, please use '#EdgeTalks'. And the school for radicals, if you haven't looked at the NHS
website, I definitely recommend it. It looks very nice. It has had a scrub up.
You can join our Facebook, School for Healthcare Radicals and one for The Edge, NHS. There are
those two groups there. As always, as well as always doing this WebEx, we have a chat on a
Wednesday, using #EdgeTalks. If you have what's the date and I think you want to talk about with
other participants, join us on Wednesday on Twitter using the hash tag.
We have two presenters. Perry and Zoe. We have also got Kate who is monitoring our twitter and Zoe
who is monitoring our chattering. Perry will talk about hackathons in a minute. Then Zoe will give an
example of running a hack. Then we will look to talk to people from Nottingham University’s Hospital
trust, who have run a hack recently and where the NHSN have run.
That is the plan for today. Hopefully it should last… There should be a lot of lively discussion between
an hour and an hour and a half. I will hand over to Perry, who has been working with the team here at
NHS England for a couple of months and is our resident on all things hackathon. Perry, can you hear
me? He has vanished. Perry, are you there? He has vanished. That is slightly worrying. OK. While we
try to get Perry back, I don't know what has happened to him. Shall we pass over to Zoe? Are you OK
to do your talk, Zoe?
ZOE LORD:
Yes, sure. thank you. Morning everybody. My session was meant to follow Perry's, so we will see
when Perry comes back in. I am delighted to be telling you about the NHS change model. And the
hackathon that we have used to refresh the NHS change model. Mine is going to be really practical
about how we did a hack.
So, what I wanted to tell you first was a little bit about our problem and how we came to use a new
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approach to change. At first, we started with the NHS change model. Maybe we can have a quick
show of hands who has known about the NHS change model and who has used it. By your name,
either raise your hand or… Brilliant. I can see the hands coming up now. Just pop your hand up if you
have heard of the NHS change model before.
Brilliant, I can see a lot of hands popping up down the list. The NHS change model was developed in
2012 by hundreds of health and care staff, in order to accelerate change across the NHS. It is built up
of eight components and it starts with our shared purpose. This is why we are doing any change. Then
the other components are all about… They don't go in any particular order but are interconnected and
online.
We have got spread of innovation, methodology, rigorous delivery, transparent measurement, system
drivers, engagement to mobilise, leadership change and all of these put together will ensure you have
a successful recruitment programme.
Why did we want to refresh? We need a continuous improvement cycle. We want to review the NHS
change model, find out where people are using it, who liked it and who didn't like it. We wanted to
strengthen the model and make sure it was fit for purpose and supported organisations going to
challenges and changes. For example, the five-year forward view.
What we wanted to do was make sure it was going from conceptual to enabling. It wasn't something
written on a paper but it enabled people to achieve change in the NHS and across health and care as
well. What we also found that people wanted… People were not using the NHS change model
because they worked in separate parts of health and care. They may have been working in social care
or care homes that were not using the NHS change model because it was called the NHS changed
model. We wanted to look at that as well.
So, what is a hack? I'm sure you want to know what one is first before we talk about hacks. Let me see
if Perry has re-joined us. No. Maybe Olly, could you explain what a hack is before I go on to why we
use the hack methodology?
OK. It looks like I am here at the moment and there is no Perry at the moment. OK.
PAUL WOODLEY:
Hello there, we have been on the phone to Perry. He has had some technical difficulties but will re-join
us shortly.
ZOE LORD:
Ollie, can you explain what a hack is?
OLLY BENSON:
The idea of hacks and why they are different to other events, hacks come… The background is the
software industry. The idea is that you take a concept and you work on it in a short time span, it is time
boxed. That is normally 24 hours or a day or a weekend. And to take either a problem, you say this is

an issue we have or sometimes you turn that problem into an ambition. This is what we want to
achieve. Then you take that and you allow a group of people and you can make that group as open,
big or little as you want and they can solve it in any way they think is best. The idea is it's not just an
exercise, the whole point of a hack, at the end of that period, time box period, you come away with
something that is a very definite product.
It doesn't have to be a finished product, but you have proof of concept. If you want to make a better
way of using the login screen, you use the technology slightly different. You allow people to get into
self-organising groups, try to work with that and at the end they present what they have done. You see
some real different approaches that people have… You generally either pick a winner or from a
combination of those. As I said, the idea of hacking has been around for 10 or 15 years in the software
industry and I get people in other industries who have said, “It works, how can we replicate it?”
Part of the idea is to take from the best practice from the software industry. Does that explain at? I
hope so.
ZOE LORD:
Fantastic, thank you Ollie. We wanted to use a different approach within the NHS and across health
and care to look at our problem which was how could we improve the NHS change model. We wanted
to do something different. As Ollie said, hacks have been used across the world in lots of different
areas. It has mainly been within IT. We wanted to look and really test how we could use a hackathon
methodology to improve health and care.
What we usually used is rapid improvement offence and these would really be focused on, maybe,
holding an action plan at the end of a session, but we wanted a change. We wanted to accelerate
change and the speed of change. We wanted to test this new approach and have some untraditional
approaches to change. That includes the hackathon methodology.
It includes a conference, approaches. People following the interest, we didn't set the agenda. We had
a wide, open approach to what we wanted to change. It was up to the participants on the day to do
what they wanted to do to improve our change model. I have just seen that Perry is back online. Perry,
would you like to… Follow on? I was just at the way we work and beginning to change. Would you like
to do your slides and then I will carry on?
[Max.Uk.Captioner is Live]
PERRY TIMMS:
Yes, sorry about that. Can you see that nice hackathon environment in front of you? OK, great.
Thanks for tolerating that. I am back. Thank you for sticking with me. So, I am going to talk about the
principles of hackathons. The photo looks like an aircraft hangar, but that is the kind of thing you see
with hackathons. They can be massive scale or a little bit cosier.
A little bit about me to put it in context. I am trying to hack the concept of the job. All of these logos are

people that I do work with and learn from and participate in, so I am hacking the job construct. I am
doing this daily, working in these different environments. Working with these people gives me access
to things like innovation and creativity that the hacks are all about.
If you want to get in touch with me, there is my twitter handle. I prefer to read to an email any day. I am
trying to hack the way people communicate with me.
You may have heard of crowd sourcing for collaborative participation in events, and this is a screen
grab from a well-known funding platform for raising awareness and funds into products. Literally, we
are seeing people converge around new ventures, problem-solving and issues online, so this crowd
sourced environment is what we are starting to see, the wisdom of the crowd.
This leads me onto what is going on in the workplace, justice or context setting for what hackathons
are all about.
A Canadian practitioner I know, John Husband, has coined this phrase, the 'wirearchy,' to talk about
how we break away from hierarchy into an interconnected set of notes, a communal thing, rather than
something hierarchical. We are seeing this come into play a little bit, and is something I have seen with
lots of hackathon activity.
I thought I would talk to you about what hackathon is. I have come up with a strapline. On a famous
coffee brand, they say, "Saving the world from mediocre coffee." Hackathons are about, "Saving the
world from mediocre workshops."
We have all sat in workshops where we try to solve a problem, and they are not normally as
successful as we hoped they would be. With hackathons, we see a different kind of frame put around
problem-solving and idea creation and new products and services. This is leading us into the crowd
sourcing environment and the socialist work environment that we have just been talking about.
Hackathons are crowd sourcing innovation. They are process light, though there is still a frame of
reference. Zoe will talk you through what we did earlier that had an element of humidity, but it is about
outcome creation. Ultimately, there is a result to be derived, a problem to be solved. It is not just
indulgent ideation.
The third bullet point really sums up what I think hackathons are, they seem to get people a bit more
daring than your average workshop. They tend to inspire bravery and random thoughts.
Because they are social, they had these three elements of being inclusive, levelling and participatory.
It doesn’t matter what place you occupy in the working environment or your experience levels. In a
hackathons, everyone is on an even footing, a level playing field. It is about who has an idea and who
has the most energy to the solution.
The bottom point is about being pacey, energising and purposeful, so we will tell you how tiring the
hackathon we did was. There is a sense of purpose that people want to contribute to.

I will move on now to summarise the fact that they are inclusive, open, democratic and social, staged
an iterative. This is what we see in hackathons.
These are the kind of hallmarks, if you want, of what good hackathons looks like. A critical issue or
new opportunity is really where you can have it as the desire to create new services if you are a
company wanting to expand your range of things to offer, although it may be a sticky issue or a
customer service issue, something you can't work out no matter how much you try. A hackathon is all
about that issue.
You need people who are creative and have the appetite for this, as they are definitely into the
collaborative element. That is something to bear in mind, who you include into it. Do you invite people
in who nominate themselves, or deliberately tried to go through some selection process to find those
people who are ultra-keen on this kind of thing?
Environment is important. I have written in small groups and large rooms. The more edgy and random
they feel, the more it tends to simulate people's alternative thinking. Somewhere with space and
natural light, with a free-flowing energy source. Sometimes, that energy affects the space.
A belief in the process is quite an easy thing to say, but quite difficult to get across. They will probably
say that it is another workshop with another fancy name, or that they have tried it before and nothing
has worked. This process has a certain degree of energy and breakthrough thinking attached to it, so
you need people to hold that judgement and suspend that, and have some temporary belief in this
process, as it frees people's minds.
The last thing is about being bold, holding your nerve and having a determination to succeed. This is
the mind-set of people who participate within hackathons. You have to hold your nerves and let the
process and the thoughts lead you through it. They are the hallmarks of a good hackathon.
I will move onto the sprints process. Zoe and I designed this, and they are quite broad.
Here's your archetypal planning cycle for running a hackathon that may be using a piece of software.
Largely, it is these kind of constructs that give you the sense of how long it takes to get a hackathon
that is using software off the ground from the concept and the idea, right through to delivery. On
average, this sort of activity requires a couple of hundred people or more - it could be something you
could do with any three-month period. That would be for large strategic issues.
You can run a hackathon with a couple of days’ notice, the right people, the right environment. This is
for large programs, but it still seems like a swifter way of resolving a sticky problem.
These sprints. We have some here that set the scene for us. The first one is largely, how you frame
the issue and look at an ideal situation to resolve it. If you know the appreciative enquiry model, it is a
little bit of the dream state within that. He would describe ideal scenarios, and what you see and feel
and know when you resolve the situation. You need that goal, that beautiful thing, to aspire to.

As you come up with ideas, it is good to come back to this first sprint and consider if it will deliver that
first sprint.
This can be prescribed to any software issue, and sprint two is the easiest. This is where you ask what
is stopping it, what the barriers are. These things fall out of people's heads without much effort, as
there have probably been past attempts at this. You can normally come up with a lot of reasons why
this kind of activity would be difficult, and what would get in the way.
We know the problems we may face and what they look like.
Sprint three is where you have fun with post-it notes and flipcharts. You start coming up with mini-
hacks, ideas and suggestions, where people say, "Wouldn't it be nice if we could do this?" People can
agree and respond to those suggestions. They can build on those hacks. This is where people huddle
and cluster around ideas and suggestions, making a big wish list of things that they would like to see a
hack approach to new ideas.
Sprint four is where you can cluster those disparate hacks, bring them all together, get people who
have that mind-set mentality to come together to create a hack from those, boiling them up into rate
because solution. Then you can start planning, putting effort into how you make it feasible, how people
can be involved, who needs to be enrolled and enlisted.
You can start thinking about the stages of the project within a work program.
So, those are the four sprints. This is an outline timetable. You may be running this over a long half
day or a short day, and you would probably spend 40 minutes on the aspired state. 30 minutes of the
barriers, two hours coming up with mini-hacks, and a couple of hours to cluster around those problems
and hacks, and you could use a tool to record them and play it back. It is like Dragon's Den.
Whilst I am thinking about hacks, in the software world, one thing that helps a product go from an idea
to design stage is that you come up with a hypothesis. This is something I have thrown into
hackathons, we can talk about a hack and put a verb in there. You followed that thread through and it
will help you to find that hack, taking a wrecked or woolly idea and driving it into more certainty. This
can frame the activities that you put together to deliver this.
So, it is definitely wanted to move things from different ideas from the workshop environment, it is
something with a definite product output, and next stage activity.
I have taken an idea from the business model canvas and created a hack campus. We use this in the
hack with the NHS change model.
You give your hack a title, which can be quite funky. You describe the details of the hack, giving it a
narrative, describing it and its purpose. Then there is the success criteria, what the hack will deliver. It
may be a new product or service. It could also be that it impacts on the way people behave, a new

model or online space, a community. The impact could be quite far reaching. Then you make a little
plan, the first few steps in this canvas, how you take this from a plan on a post-it note into something
that actually becomes a fully-fledged product.
Just a summary really. What is a hackathon? It was a crowd sourced innovation, you have to be
inclusive and participative, but this is a summary of what is a hack. I will leave you with this quote
before I jump on a pole and ask you a couple of questions to see if that has landed with you and this is
something you can do. This is a thought leader and German called Malcolm Gradwell.
He says, “In the heart of the knowledge, economy is fundamentally social.” They are after something
where innovation can overcome the sticky problems we are facing in all sorts of ways. But it from me. I
will attempt to jump on this appalling function. Wish me luck as I dive into the new realm of technology.
So I am hoping that in front of you right now that if you wanted to run a hackathon what would people's
response to you be? Would they be excited, confused, intrigued or unlikely to want you to run one? It
would be interesting if you could poll a number of responses on that one.
Got a couple of unlikelies... Shifting towards excited and intrigued at the moment. There is an element
of it is new, it is different and it sounds a bit edgy. Intrigue and excitement might come from that,
"Thank goodness we don't have to run any more boring workshops anymore." I am going to close it.
Most people would be intrigued. I'd rather people respond in that sense, tell me more and how we
experiment with a small one. I have run hackathons during my entire profession in HR and smaller
problem-solving solutions.
I will share the results. Hopefully you can see that. That is good. I think I can put myself back out and I
think, hopefully, you should be back on screen. That is it for me on hackathons, there is a bit there for
how you can get in touch with me. I will leave you with the quote there, he talks about "This is not an
information age. It's an age of networked intelligence." From what I can see, you do get networked
intelligent within that festival of energy and fun. Thank you for listening to me, everybody. We are open
to questions and stuff before Zoe comes on if that is all right, moderator.
SPEAKER:
That was really fascinating. I had a couple of questions, do you think there are particular types of
problems?
PERRY TIMMS:
Yeah, if you have got something very ‘processy’, a hackathon might seem like a heavy approach to
solving out. If that process is part of a bigger change, which is part of people's attitudes and
behaviours, you might want to lift the hack up to that level and not just look at the process but the
bigger implications of it. You have to think a bit big. The smaller problems can be used to other
techniques. It is when you need that diversity of thought, multiplicity of viewpoints. That is when a hack
comes in.
OLLY BENSON:

Some people are hesitant, they are not sure what it is. Do you have any ideas to reassure them?
PERRY TIMMS:
The poll revealed quite a bit, there was excitement and intrigue. There are people who are probably a
bit worried that it will put them outside their comfort zone and they can't participate. I would encourage
everybody to be very open about the way you set up hacks so people don't feel like it is a process they
have no experience on and they opt out. Giving more information to them and doing sample hacks
with people involved, ones that are quite safe, not as big as the issue you are getting involved in, it can
warm people up. People need to understand what it is about. They're shifting mind helps rather than
the old-style workshops. I'd encourage people to be very open and get participation through
awareness and again that intrigue.
OLLY BENSON:
Brilliant. I like the thing you were talking about. The energy of the environment you create. Have you
got any top tips, what can you do to bring that energy into a room?
PERRY TIMMS:
It is an interesting one. I don't know if you know anybody involved in the IT industry, some of the
places the IT guys have got as officers can be conducive to this. Somebody does something, they may
say can we run our hack in your office room. You can find places that don't necessarily cost money
and take you out of your normal operating mode and environment and give you a different stimulus. I
have seen people claim little village halls and turn them into a place where hacks can be done,
because they kind of decorate the room a bit more edgy and they bring in some alternative ways to
record your thoughts. Even if you have 10 pens in the class, it gets people excited about writing on the
walls.
You need an environment that is cheap and conducive and is edgy. That is when you use your friends
and colleagues. I don't think sterile rooms are good. The edgier the better. I've heard of people setting
them up in marquees and tents, I don't know that people would want to do that in this climate.
OLLY BENSON:
Brilliant. Hopefully Jodi has been monitoring the chat, particularly, from Stephen.
JODI BROWN:
Good morning, everybody. Fairly quiet in the chat, but I think because everyone is intrigued, Perry. It is
a really good topic. First of all, we have got Nicola. I'm not sure where she is from, perhaps she wants
to tell us in the chat box, Nicola is thinking of doing a hack after a Young People's takeover event and
she is in the very early stages of thinking at the moment. One of the questions that she has asked is
the need for a facilitator at hacked events. Can you reflect on your experiences? I know you are
probably a bit biased, Perry.
PERRY TIMMS:
It is like a referee saying that a football match should have a good referee. I think it does require a
facilitator. Anyone with the enthusiasm can hold that space. You don't have to be a workshops expert.

If you have got the passion for it and understand that process and that you need those little gates and
timestamps to drive you to an outcome, I think it is an open source environment. Anybody can do it. I
happily offer my experience to anybody who wants to connect with me after this about what you do as
a facilitator and what you look out for. I can chat about the mental state that I am on in that area. It is
an important role because people can drift and things can become predictable unless you as a
facilitator keep that edginess to it.
You can take the slides as your facilitator guide and used the timing for your subject and put it on with
energy.
JODI BROWN:
The slides will be available after, Nicola and anybody else who is interested. Use the resources. A
good point from Stephen in Northern Ireland, he is really keen to run a hackathon. It seems that the
local university buys into it, but there are real problems getting a buy-in from the NHS.
Stephen says they are not responding. What can Stephen do to get to that level… To intrigue.
PERRY TIMMS:
If you are getting a closed-door, it is not open. Then starting with an area you could be daring with, it
could be a small-scale thing and just experience what I have described and get some really nice
outcomes from it. You could do a reverse business case, you could say "We spent half a day, six
people, we came up with five really good ideas and we think they will change this for the better." And
say, "If we didn't do it this way, this is what it would potentially have costed and resulted in."
I don't think people do the reverse business case and justify that the normal option wouldn't get you
there and it would be slightly longer. I would do that. I would do a small scale experiment that has a
business type outcome for it and throw that in the mix and say, "We do this on a small scale, we think
the impact could be tenfold if we ramped it up.."
KATE POUND:
Stephen asked if there are recent examples of good hack outcomes that could be used going forward.
PERRY TIMMS:
I'd like to do research or people who have done hacks. People tend to be shy, they don't show what
they have done. Facebook have done them and I'm not sure of the results. People have been put in
that sort of warehouse, that, with 25 toy products and they take something like $2 million in R&D.
The top line examples like that, Stephen has got me more intrigued now to find some more outcomes.
I did one fairly recently with a HR team and they have come up with about four projects that will help
them with their talent management. They have not delivered them yet but in the space of half a day,
they have got real clarity on where they need to direct their efforts. I didn't need to spend money taking
over it. One day, it produced four clear lines to follow.
If hacks clarify things that take a long time, they are a good way of extraditing. We should look at that

as well as products. Smooth the process, it has a cost benefit. I will undertake… Do research on real
cast iron examples. I will play that into the hash tag to you guys. I want to know as well, thank you,
Stephen, raising that.
KATE POUND:
That is all from the chat room. Handing back to Ollie.
OLLY BENSON:
Thank you. Hopefully Zoe is still around and ready to pick up with her presentation. Zoe.
ZOE LORD:
Thank you. OK. Welcome back. We were talking about the NHS and how we have been hacking the
NHS change model. A few people have joined since we started, so, just a quick overview. We were
looking at hacking the NHS change model. I have put a link in the chat room where there is more
information if people want to find more information about the change model. The people watching
online, after, if you just Google NHS IQ and the change model, you will be able to see and find more
information about the change model.
We are hacking it to improve it as part of the continuous improvement cycle. We wanted to strengthen
it and make sure it is fit for purpose, and organisations not just the NHS but health and care. As I said
before, we hacked because we wanted to do something different.
We wanted to make quick, fast, effective changes across the NHS. We wanted to use a new approach
and something we wanted to test, until we knew it worked successfully in other areas. How can we
bring it across to the other areas?
I wanted to give you all a practical application of how we did it so other people could replicate what we
have done. So, we have some online hack packs. This is everything people needed to know before
they came to the event, why we are hacking and we also talked about what people should wear,
because people didn't quite know what they were coming along too. We had a nice, edgy venue.
People could come along casually and what people are going to eat and everything to allay people’s
fears and anxieties of what would happen.
We invited a diverse range of people to the event. There were the usual suspects there, and brought
some continuity. We wanted to have a diverse range of people, with backgrounds and thoughts and
views. And just the way that people came about life, it was all really different. So we had some people
from the NHS, of course. We had nurses and doctors and consultants and managers, a broad breadth
of different people across the NHS. But we wanted to cross care boundaries.
We looked at people from other areas, people came from the police, the military, from the Department
of Health, enterprises, we had a real diverse group of people. That was really important to have a lot of
different people.

ZOE LORD:
We were going to have an event for 80 people, but we wanted to gain insight into what everybody was
doing across health care, and even globally. We wanted to find out what they thought about change
and the NHS change model.
We did that before the event, and we interviewed and survey 200+ people using SurveyMonkey, or
face-to-face interviews. We asked people what they thought about change and what works and doesn't
work.
We went for quite a broad brush approach to change, then we asked more questions like, "Have you
heard of the change model, and have you used it?" We wanted to know if it was successful or not. So,
we asked lots of questions about the change model, and out of that, we got some really, really useful
insights.
People use the change model for many different purposes, for projects, events and meetings. We also
found out about the knowledge that people had to change model. It is very obvious that the more
people know, the more people found it useful.
If more people knew about it, more people would be finding it of use and we would have more effective
change across the NHS. People wanted accessible information on the practical application, some
people found the language to be inhibiting, and the name was also quite a contentious issue. Some
people absolutely loved the NHS brand, as it is called the NHS change model. It brought prestige.
Other people thought it was quite hindering. Other healthcare providers can't pick it up. Then we had
another discussion of whether it was a model or a framework. This is what we took from the 200
people, and this was filtered into the event.
So, coming onto the event, we had 80 people in a room. It was one day and we had a series of hacks
or sprints to really explore what was going on, what we could change, and how we could enable the
development of a new improved NHS change model.
The remit of the changes. We wanted to bring people on board and keep hold of the people who do
like it now. We didn't want change for change’s sake, and we wanted to think about the spread and did
limitation of the model.
This is what it looks like. As you can see, it wasn't the usual sitting in rows. Everybody was up and
moving, and it was quite a frenzied event. It was very exciting, and a very different event than anything
I have attended in the NHS.
We started with a bit of bingo. We have this diverse range of people coming to this event, but they
didn't know each other, so we had a game of bingo. We gave them useful information, and we might
have asked them things like, "Go and find someone who is a designer. Go and find someone that has
interest in design." This was a really good way of people finding out he was in the room and a good

way to network.
We then used an interesting tool called TRIZ, a Russian acronym, and there are three parts to it. First,
we looked at how we could make the worst possible change model in the world, and we wrote a whole
list of things about how this would be a great disaster. This included things like not telling anybody
about it, not using it, not publicising it, not making it fit for purpose.
Then we marked off the things that we do at the moment, and there were a few things. We then looked
at the third part, what we need to do to ensure we didn't have the worst change model in the world.
This was a really, really good exercise to get people thinking differently.
This is different to other events we have ran or attended before, as we were told what to do. All we
were told is, we have had the overview and we know our remit, so everybody follow your interests and
go and improve the model. This was quite frenzied and there were lots of different groups that have
set themselves up. Some people looked at language, some people look to design, some people
looked to how it could be used in future. This was fantastic.
So, what have we come out with? We came out with a new prototype for a new model, and we came
out with change space, which is… Rather than having a flat model, this is a space, a platform where
people can go. We came up with this slightly changed model, but this isn't finished. We are still
working on the model. It wasn't change for change's sake though.
We were thinking of developing something like this. This community can interact and support one
another, and there are loads of resources and case studies and tools that people can support each
other and take off-the-shelf. This was also going to be linked to social media like Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn. People can keep the community going and support one another.
This was the plan. This is still ongoing at the moment, and we still continue to look at this change
space on the model and how it will work. We are still working with the community and the people from
the hack to finish this model.
So, that was the event. It was very wild with lots and lots coming out of it. We had more output than we
could ever have imagined, and before we went into the hack, we didn't quite know what we were going
to get. We put a lot of hope and trusted the people coming to the event.
A learning point that you can't second-guess what the group are going to come out with. We didn't
elect our control, so we looked to divergent thinking and convergent thinking, and we needed to let
people go so that the work could evolve, and the shape and scope involved with it.
We needed to look up reframing, which is really important when asking the 200 people about what
they thought of change on the NHS change model, because we wanted to focus on change as a
whole, not just the change model itself. We had to frame the questions very carefully, and we did a lot
of reframing to make sure we were not asking questions in a way that we want to get the answers.

We needed to balance the convergent diversion thinking, and we want to keep a wide breadth of
thought. As I thought before, we needed to know what was in and out of scope. We needed to know
what was in and out of our control.
The diversity in the room was fantastic. People skills, people's knowledge. We had such a wide,
diverse group of people, and that was really, really beneficial to the outputs of the day.
The unconference worked really well. If it wasn't going to plan, they set up splinter groups and went
somewhere else, or shapes that they were in. This really worked as people were dedicating their time,
and this is really important to us.
We told participants to trust the process and go with the flow, and this is really important for us as well.
We needed to go with the flow and be so inhibiting on the process. That was the learning from the
change model hack.
So, that is the end of letting you know about what we do but the change model on our hackathon.
Have we got any questions?
OLLY BENSON:
Let's find out if we have some questions. I'm sure people are taking in what you have been saying as it
was really interesting. I have a couple of questions.
As you are the person organising this event and this was your first hack, did you get out of it what you
wanted?
ZOE LORD:
Yes, definitely. We definitely got out of it a good start and some prototypes, but I do think that we
needed a bit more time. We have seen that a lot of hacks go on for maybe two days. A bit more time
would have been good, but we got exactly what we wanted out of it. It just is a bit more work on going
back to the participants.
If we had more time, we could have done that on the day. It was really, really good learning.
OLLY BENSON:
I just answered my second question of what you would do if you do it again. But what have you
learned, how are you going to interact differently at other events in future?
ZOE LORD:
How we are going to attract different people?
OLLY BENSON:
What you will learn from a hack elsewhere, in other events.

ZOE LORD:
I think there was a lot that we actually learned. My personal view is maybe the new way of doing
things… We don't go back to rapid improvement plans. There is good stuff in that but how do we
choose a more tailored and blended approach to moving forward? This event was a great success and
we are going to hear what happened with hackathons in Nottingham and Hull in a moment. There is so
much good stuff coming out of these, why would we go back? It is fantastic, it has worked. We were
testing the first time as a national team, testing a hackathon approach. I think it has worked well and
there is no going back for me and for the rest of our team.
From what we know, there are a lot of people within the NHS health and care within England, they are
really taking this up now. The next step is to support everybody to make sure that we can improve the
NHS.
OLLY BENSON:
Brilliant. Jodi, you are watching the chat. Have any comments or questions come through following the
chat? Is Jodi there?
JODI BROWN:
Sorry Olly, got stuck. Nicola asks was it purely an event or is it solely on social media?
ZOE LORD:
People were inputting from outside the event. It was mainly focused in the event. We will hear from
Hull and they had a lot of social activity. It is something we can definitely build on in the future.
JODI BROWN:
Thank you, Ollie, and thank you Nicola for the question.
OLLY BENSON:
It is really interesting points that you brought up. I look forward to seeing what happens going forward
with the change model. As Zoe mentioned we will talk about a couple more hacks. I'm hoping
somewhere on the line is Melanie, I don't know, Paul, if you are able… Is that Melanie? You were
involved in a hack that was recently done in Nottingham.
SPEAKER:
That is right.
OLLY BENSON:
Putting you on the spot a bit, can you give us an overview of the hack and the event?
SPEAKER:

I work in health care of older people. It was my colleague and I, we have been in this health care for a
year now and we wanted to make it more appealing. My colleague got a group of us together, we did
this by a closed Facebook page initially. We were able to put our ideas down, any thoughts, any areas
we wanted to see improvement. And then on the day, a group of us got together and we obviously
went to the protest, what you have been talking about today. We had four areas that we looked at in
depth. The first one was discharge planning. The second one was hearing issues for older people. The
third one was we wanted to keeping our patients and staff happy, very broad as an area there but it
was something we wanted to see improvements in. And improving recruitment of staff into the older
people service.
Those were the areas. We went through the process, Zoe and Perry already discussed that. We broke
those down and we ended up getting some outcomes and we presented our presentations to a panel
of NUH staff. We were fortunate to get funding for all of our four groups and we are now all working
together to get those ideas in place up and running.
OLLY BENSON:
We just got those four different hacks that you had, put them up on the screen. Did you get involved in
one in particular?
SPEAKER:
There were three of us. We looked at keeping patients and staff happy. It worked hand-in-hand with
recruitment and retention. We looked at, initially, what things we could do to keep our staff happy, to
make them stay in the health care of older people. And we saw how we could change part of our ward
environment. Myself and a colleague work on a ward that has been open for a year now, we haven't
got a dining room or social area for them. We looked at how we could improve that, we got loads of
ideas and wrote them down. We came up with an idea of getting the old and young together, by
getting iPads for our patients so that we could use reminiscent therapy, they could play games, they
could get a newspaper and Skype their relatives.
That way, our younger colleagues and student nurses who, a lot of the time, don't see older people,
we thought that would integrate them and help them with our older patients to get them to work
together. That was our idea that we came up with.
OLLY BENSON:
It sounds really interesting. We are hoping to hear from Hull, but unfortunately no one from the
organisation is able to join us this morning. At least I was there and so was my colleague Jodi. I will tell
you a little bit about the Hull hack and then we can discuss your experience in Nottingham. But this is
what I discovered from Hull.

The event happened there last week. They worked with Hull and East Yorkshire hospital, and East
Yorkshire ECG, quite a mouthful. It was to look at patient flow through Hull hospital. Similar to you, it
was an issue but more of a specific issue. The event took place in a sort of community centre close to
Hull, and it was quite virtual. It had about 50 people sign up to attend and 50 virtually.
Similar to what happened in Nottingham, three teams… One was looking at morning discharge, and
that is a problem in a lot of hospitals. People are ready to go but actually nobody can let them until the
afternoon. That affects the event for everyone else. The other issues were from the emergency
department into the AAU and what caused that, but also actually people coming into the department
and what they could do to decrease those people who didn't need to be there not being there and
leaving as quickly as possible.
How successful do you think the event was for you in Nottingham?
SPEAKER:
Personally, I think it was really successful. It was really different to any kind of study day that we had
ever done before. A lot of people were, I suppose, not quite sure what to expect and as the day went
on you could see the energy in the room, everyone wanted to get their opinions and ideas across.
They wanted a final outcome, so to speak.
We were able to work with plenty of multi-professional staff, on a day-to-day basis you don't ever get
the opportunity to sit down and have a one to one or in a group and say this is the issue in my area for
me as a profession. Is this the same for you? All those ideas out on the table, to be able to agree,
disagree and then to come together to then produce something or an idea or a solution. That in itself is
really good.
OLLY BENSON:
Yeah, I think, similarly, a lot of that was reflected in what happened in Hull. I'm reminded there are a lot
of links to stuff in Hull, by Judy and Carol on the chat. I don't know if Jodi wants to share her
experience.
JODI BROWN:
Thank you, Olly. It was my first non-technological hack. I was an expert on the topic being hacked on
the day. But I don’t think that really mattered.
As much as you need people in there who really know their stuff, I think the diversity of people in the
room was fantastic and people coming along with energy and a commitment to the purpose was
equally important as having topic experts in the room. But for me, something I found interesting, Olly,
was that on the first evening of the hack, we took part in an exercise called 'flowopoly', I won't do it

justice when I describe it but it was an interactive game, for our respective wards and the facilitator put
up the activity happening in the hospital. We were rushing around the room from A&E to AAU. It's
important to respond in an indirect way. By playing this game, people started to get competitive and
comments were made among the people responsible for various wards.
Had we sat down and answered those questions directly - what are the issues with patient flow around
A&E, AAU - it would not have been as fun if it hadn't been done in such a direct, engaging way. It was
an interesting activity, wasn't it?
OLLY BENSON:
It was mentioned earlier, about clarifying things. Perry said hackathons are great opportunities to
clarify thought and experience. That is kind of what I took from that flowopoly event, I have not done
something similar. Actually, what it did was clarify and made people realise this is what happens in my
ward and has a real impact on what happens across the rest of the organisation and actually, I might
have some free beds. And if wherever is really struggling, it is not just about me saying, "I will enjoy
that I have got three beds that are empty today," it's saying, "I need to make sure the rest of the
hospital can benefit from that.." Melanie, what did you learn personally from it?
SPEAKER:
It was great to talk to people and have the opportunity to do that. It was just really, really good, and I
would love to be able to do other study days like that. It would be great to do something like that once
a month, get together with a group of people, and you could put everything on the table and discuss it.
I just think that we are always so busy that it is difficult sometimes.
A group of people might say that they will produce something but that may not suit other people. This
is a really, really good way, a good tool.
OLLY BENSON:
It was great to have a panel at the end of the day, so it was just that you were there saying what you
wanted to do, you are explaining why he wanted to spend the money. It changed the focus of how
people thought about things.
SPEAKER:
We knew there was a panel in the afternoon, so we knew we had to get something concrete, then to
be able to present it to them and present it to the rest of the colleagues, and we all came away with
some money, so that was really, really good. It really helped.

OLLY BENSON:
How would you sell the hack to somebody who was listening? They might be intrigued but not sure if it
is right for their organisation. What would you say to them?
SPEAKER:
I think I would possibly start by getting some interest, get some colleagues that you know will be on
board. For us, we got a closed group on Facebook and started putting comments on there, then
opening it out to people. It might take a few weeks, but get the information and see what happens
really. Eventually, people will start coming into the group and getting ideas across.
They will really get thinking, talking about it. Have constant positivity, explaining that this will be really
good, that we will get together to produce ideas. We may not necessarily get a final idea, but it is about
getting your thought processes thinking. That is something that I would do.
Definitely make sure you get a mixture of your colleagues together so that you have different views.
Yes, I would definitely do that as a starting point. Then you can see who is on board with you and work
with them, then hopefully, that will then filter out for other people to be more interested.
OLLY BENSON:
One thing you benefited from was having people wanting to support you, and we need to put you in
touch with Stephen in Northern Ireland who is having a problem at the moment.
Thank you very much, Melanie. Carol, who was also at the Hull hack, has been busy typing away in
the chat box about different points, so we might jump to something else. She is talking about lots of
different debates and disrupted ideas. Jodi, sorry, I am doing your job by reading out comments.
SPEAKER:
Feel free to do it, Ollie. That is great.
There is a bit of a discussion about how you make sure you can get everybody together, because in
our sector, people are busy and their priority isn't attending hacks. So, how can you do it in a way that
you get the right people in the room without bringing down the service at the same time? Points made
by Perry and other people, the importance of the virtual element, but doing it in a really inexpensive
and crude way. Have a room with tea and biscuits, have your own breakout hacks coming on.
It doesn't have to be a massive industrialised event, be something very local and personal. The
message coming through is, "Just do it. Start it and try it out." Review what you have done, make your
tweaks and try it again. But getting started is the key thing.

OLLY BENSON:
That is great. We have a couple of minutes left. If anybody has any questions they want to add to the
chat… I wonder if we will get some final thoughts from people. Perry, are you still connected?
PERRY TIMMS:
I would guess that the mood is that there is a lot more positive thoughts about running a hack in your
way with your issue with your people, as long as there is that whole support endorsement from those
people who have the more senior decision-making roles.
I am guessing the appetites have been raised by that, which is great news. You can experiment with
different things, so starting is the thing to do. It is such an inexact science that you learn by doing it.
You build up your own expertise, but never underestimate how much impact it can have with one or
two really good ideas that would never have come up in other ways.
I have also suggested… People contact me and I am happy they do that. I love working with you guys
and what you do, so I am happy that people can ping me lines. I am quite happy to get involved. Count
me in.
OLLY BENSON:
Brilliant. We will put your details on screen.
Zoe, do you have any final thoughts?
ZOE LORD:
I have really enjoyed listening to the stories from Hull and Nottingham, seeing it help real lives and
people can be affected by hackathons. I love hearing stories about that, and from what is going on on
Twitter and chat rooms, there is an appetite for this. I hope we have supported you and you have
some ideas about what we have done and how. Please let us know what you are doing and achieving
as that is really important. We love hearing all those stories.
OLLY BENSON:
Brilliant.
Jodi, any final comments or questions?
JODI BROWN:
The final summary I have got, and I can see this happening in the chat room, is people's propensity to
share and help each other. That is the ethos of the hack, people coming together to do something for
the greater good, and I have put some Twitter handles into the chat box. I would encourage people to

make connections around this.
I said earlier that it would be a terrible shame if everybody tries to reinvent the wheel doing hacks.
Let's show what we are learning. We are all learning as we go. It is an evolving method. Let's connect
and share.
Thank you to everybody that has contributed. It has been a very energetic conversation this morning.
OLLY BENSON:
People are starting to connect with people in the chat room, so hopefully, you can find different people
on Twitter. Just to remind you, on Wednesday at 4 PM GMT, we will be holding a tweet chat. If you
have any thoughts, you can take part. This is your opportunity to get involved.
Don't forget, you can join the Facebook group, actually, there are two. School for Health and Care
Radicals at The Edge NHS. Don't forget to check out the website as well. That went live earlier this
week and looks really nice.
You can keep using #EdgeTalks once we have finished the webinar. This is the end of the time, as it is
just coming up to 11. I want to remind you that next month, we have the transformathon, a 24-hour
event on 27 January at 4 PM. Check out the website for that.
It just remains for me to thank the participants. Thanks very much, have a lovely Christmas and we will
see you in the New Year.
PERRY TIMMS:
Thanks, Olly. Great job.

Transcript from Edge Talk on 4 December 2015

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