Here’s a fun game: what is it that links Facebook’s ‘Like’ button, the most downloaded taxi app in the world and the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham?
 
The answer, you may be surprised to learn, is hackathons.
 
For the uninitiated, a hackathon is when a group of people come together to identify problems and find solutions to them using the wonders of technology, typically over a couple of days. When Facebook wanted to improve people’s engagement with each other, they held a hackathon and ended up creating their famous ‘thumbs up’. When one man had to wait an hour and half in the rain for a cab in Rio de Janeiro, he and his colleagues came together to try and solve the inefficiencies of local public transport. Easy Taxi was born.
 
So, what does all this mean for Barking and Dagenham?
 
Our borough typifies London: its celebrated past, its vibrant present, its relentless optimism about the future. It was once the home of England’s 1966 World Cup-winning manager Sir Alf Ramsey and its captain Bobby Moore. It was the scene of the Sewing Machine Strikes, immortalised in the hit film ‘Made in Dagenham’ for their part in the battle for equal pay in the workplace. During the 2012 Olympics, arguably London’s finest moment of recent decades, we were a host borough.
 
This is an area with an exciting future. Huge regeneration is planned, including new transport links and housing. People want to be here, and when they come, they want to stay: we were recently crowned England’s property renovation hotspot. Like so much of London, Barking and Dagenham has changed and continues to change at a rapid pace. The borough is more diverse than it has ever been and we celebrated that recently through our Summer of Festivals. But while this is all testament to the success of our area, it also poses challenges. The question for us all is how do we ensure that everyone in Barking and Dagenham – no matter what background or faith you come from – has a stake and a say in our community.
 
It’s that question that has led to Barking and Dagenham teaming up this weekend with local technology company DigiLab to host the UK’s first ever social-cohesion hackathon. By bringing together tech experts and service designers with local people of all ages and backgrounds, we will respond to and tackle the issues and concerns of residents. 
 
By the end of the weekend we will start to develop practical ways to improve the way services work for our communities, find solutions to challenge perceptions of public safety, bring different generations of people together across the borough, or help to encourage the reporting of hate crime. The only limits to what we can achieve are our imaginations, and what matters most is that it is local people who will decide.
 
In modern Britain, with the technology and the talent available to us, this should be the norm, not a one-off: bringing people together and empowering them to build the society they want to see.
 
This is an exciting opportunity for us. If you’re in the local area, sign up and come along. If you’re a service designer or tech expert wanting to create meaningful solutions to everyday problems get in touch. If you’re not, we will be updating on our progress during and after the weekend, so take a look at our social media pages to find out more. Oh, and while you are there, don’t forget to hit the ‘Like’ button.
 
Councillor Darren Rodwell is leader of Barking and Dagenham Council

Credit: Wareable

For the past few weeks I’ve been wearing the new Apple Watch Series 3 on my left wrist and the Fitbit Ionic, the company’s first ever smartwatch, on my right.

The experience of using both at the same time has been interesting to say the least. On the one hand (well, wrist), there’s Apple’s third generation Watch, which has come on leaps and bounds since the first one and is finally starting to provide a more compelling argument that iPhone owners need one in their lives.

Notifications have been a smartphone staple for what seems like forever and above anything else, this is what I’ve found myself tapping into most on the Watch Series 3. A glance at my wrist on a packed tube carriage or running on a treadmill in the gym. I don’t tend to deal or respond to these notifications a lot of the time, but it’s nice just to be aware of what’s happening at work or knowing there’s a WhatsApp group conversation I need to be part of. I know, a smartphone does this already, but normally when I grab my phone it means spending time checking in on Twitter, Instagram and a bunch of other apps. Basically, more screen time.

Apple’s third smartwatch does a pretty credible impression of a sports watch too. It’ll track my swims and runs and not leaving me waiting achingly long for a GPS signal to lock on. There’s also something quite addictive about closing those Activity rings before my other Apple Watch owning friends. Until battery life gets significantly better though, I’m not sure it’ll ever replace a dedicated sports watch, but for most, it does tick the boxes.

The big new addition of course is LTE, which has been available on smartwatches before, but means I can leave my iPhone behind and get a smartphone-like experience on my watch. Taking and making calls from my wrist or asking Siri about appointments in my calendar in public is just something I’m never going to get used to. But the notification support or the ability to stream music (which isn’t available just yet) without having to remember to transfer new music over to the watch iTunes could persuade me to spend a little more for the luxury. Ultimately, though I still want my smartphone by my side. What happens when you want to grab a quick snap of something? A smartwatch just isn’t cut out for that.

Then there’s the Ionic, the only other smartwatch that has been talked about as much as Apple’s. Fitbit has taken its fitness tracker DNA and put it inside of a design that is best described as Marmite. Some will love it, some will hate it. Unsurprisingly, fitness tracking is where the Ionic impresses most, but it does a decent job as a smartwatch too. Notification support is more basic than Apple’s approach, but features like Fitbit Pay contactless payments work effortlessly and while there aren’t too many standalone apps right now, the few that are there, work well.

Fitbit’s CEO James Park gave his reasons why the company didn’t include LTE in its first smartwatch, and I’m inclined to agree with what he had to say on the feature for now. But there’s a sense of inevitability that it will be on the Fitbit agenda further down the line. One of those reasons will no doubt have been battery life, one of the biggest differentiators between Apple and Fitbit’s smartwatches and the reason the Ionic spends more time on my wrist. It just lasts longer (four days to Apple’s day and a half) even with a super bright display and that’s something Apple is going to have to seek to improve. Because if it does, then Fitbit will seriously have to raise its game.

The real litmus test for any piece of technology is whether it has the ability to stick around and when I mean stick around, I mean you are still using it for more than a few weeks after you first pull it out of the box. In the case of the Watch Series 3 and the Ionic, they will be sticking around. At least they will be for me. I’ve not really been able to say that about a lot of smartwatches before, but both Apple and Fitbit have gone some way to prove that smartwatches do have a future at a time when many still doubt it. Couple that with Google’s more fashion focused approach to Android Wear through partnerships with the Fossil Group and Movado, or Garmin’s ability to blend proper sports tracking with watch smarts, and it finally feels like smartwatches are going in the right direction.

Now there are strong options to choose from, options that offer different answers to what a smartwatch should be and what they should do. It finally feels like the benefits of owning one are starting to be realised and if the news that Apple is now the number one watchmaker in the world tells us anything, it’s that it’s time to accept that smartwatches aren’t going anywhere.

Cyber-security threats. Ransomware attacks. Software malfunctions. These terms used to be reserved for the most advanced sci-fi films and IT professionals. In a case of life imitating art, these terms have now entered the everyday lexicon and have a real-world impact, outside of the IT department. The recent WannaCry ransomware attack crippled the UK’s NHS’ IT systems, causing appointments to be cancelled and operations to be postponed. Similarly, we saw British Airways fall foul to a software outage which grounded every commercial flight from Gatwick and Heathrow for 24 hours, obviously ruining or, at least delaying, thousands of passenger’s holiday and travel plans. We are used to seeing doomsday cyber scenarios play out in movies, but as our lives become ever more affected by those who wish to cause cyber chaos, can we truly trust technology in this day and age?

The invisible threat

Technology is truly integrated into every aspect of our life. We use technology to work, to relax, for entertainment, to communicate, to plan our schedule, and now some can even use it to do laundry. It stands to reason that the more we rely on technology, the more we need to trust that it will just simply work. But cyber security threats and software issues have the potential to negatively impact the way we live and, in many cases, has made us sceptical when it comes to adopting new technologies. Why would we trust gadgets and services such as AI and self-driving cars that we have seen cause hypothetical worldwide chaos time and time again on the big screen, when simple software faults can ground planes and destroy our health service in real life? Our recent study looked into our perception of emerging technology and it makes for grim reading if you are a technology company. Almost 80 per cent of UK adults looking to buy AI products in the future may reconsider due to the threat of hackers targeting technology. And nearly half (48 per cent) of us claim that we would not purchase AI devices at all due to the threat of cyber-attacks. The revelations regarding 1984-esque Orwellian hacking tools developed and used by the CIA and British intelligence to spy on household connected devices is just one reason why we as consumers are concerned about emerging technology.

The reality of the situation is that society is not yet comfortable with embracing the technology we have watched destroy or take over the world in films time after time. But it is now becoming increasingly obvious that our negative perception is standing in the way of the potential for positive digital transformation and is an issue technology companies must address, if we are to embrace emerging technology.

Who is the master?

Home robots have been designed to help us and eliminate household chores, who would be against that? The problem is that we have seen these devices regularly depicted negatively on-screen. For instance, the AI robotic creation, Ultron, featured in Marvel’s latest Avengers superhero flick was designed with the intention of helping humanity, but inevitably acts in a destructive way that was not intended. In this world, Thor, Iron Man and Captain America were on hand to neutralise the cold hearted robotic threat, but outside the Marvel cinematic universe, the real world does not have a super-powered villain deterrent. Indeed, our study also revealed that less than a quarter (24 per cent) of us believe home robots are safe with over half (52 per cent) concerned they could also fall victim to cyber criminals with malicious intentions. It is, therefore, more important than ever for companies producing home robots to prove these devices are not a menace to society, but are designed to help make our lives easier.

But there is hope! Companies such as Tesla, Apple and Microsoft are pouring a huge amount of time, energy and talent in to developing innovative AI technology, all of which proves that companies are taking our concerns seriously.

It is up to manufacturers of such technology to prove to us that doomsday predictions made in films are works of fiction and nothing more. It is crucial that they place a high importance on prioritising quality to protect the population thus gaining our confidence in regards to emerging technologies. Quality must be integral and prioritised from the initial concept of a new tech product right through to when the device hits the shelf.

Ultimately, if innovations such as AI, autonomous vehicles and smart homes are to become part of our everyday life, government and businesses have a duty to prove to every one of us that stringent precautions have been taken to safeguard and protect human life. Quality is non-negotiable and by proving this is at the core of innovation, businesses will begin to change our current perception of advanced technology.

SpaceX

This week I had the privilege of joining some of the country’s foremost mental health practitioners at Mayden’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT Connect 2017) conference to hear about the latest trends and practice in this increasingly high profile area. There were the leading lights in commissioning, delivery and policy, from both the adult and children and young people (CYP) spheres of mental health.

As a layman, it was both enlightening and humbling to meet the people at the sharp end of what many describe as a ‘Cinderella Service.’ There were of course harrowing stories from the perspective of mental health service users and those who treat them.

But what really struck me was how forward looking the delegates were in terms of technology. Doing a fair amount of work in the field of Artificial Intelligence currently, I must admit I was not expecting AI and augmented reality to be on the agenda of those working with mental health patients. But what do I know, apparently!

This part of our nation’s health service isn’t bogged down in the common debates on pay, staffing, budgets, and reform (though they had all of course read Simon Stevens’ Five Year Forward View). They were instead passionately focused on wielding the technology at our disposal to manage people’s conditions in new ways.

Chaise longue are old hat in psychology now, Minecraft and Pokémon Go are in. I’m not being facetious, gaming is now a genuine, credible avenue for exploring new approaches to mental health. We were shown a fascinating example of a Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) programme that gives the user an avatar to interact with issues in a fantasy world which allows them to overcome their personal challenges in a safe space. But this wasn’t about replacing human interaction with gadgets and games, nor was it about working with more patients using less people. It was about using tools to augment/complement the work of more conventional face-to-face therapy.

We heard of a case of an individual with acute autism who could not cross bridges, but practicing on a Virtual Reality version allowed them to overcome their fear. Crossing a bridge may sound trivial to you and I, but to this individual it was life changing. Another touching case was of children who would struggle to leave their houses due to crippling anxiety, who then found a new lease for the outdoors at the prospect of rounding up a 100+ Pokémon.

What became an increasingly clear part of the picture was that these strides had come partly due to the new generation of professionals entering the sector. Not only were they new, enthusiastic and un-jaded, many were of a millennial generation who have grown up with computing, apps, ‘tech’, as part of their daily lives. It is perhaps therefore no surprise that they are exploring ways to use that tech to do their jobs differently and better.

It seems that our other public services may have a lot to learn from Cinderella.

Kilav via Getty Images