There are so many ways to innovate and collaborate but there's nothing like a Hackathon to get a group of 150 parents, engineers, designers, and healthcare providers (and babies!) in a big room together. ASKlabs was thrilled to document the "Make the Breast Pump Not Suck!" Hackathon for the MIT Media Lab the weekend of September 20-21, 2014. 

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The Hackathon was a huge success. With the goal of improving the breastfeeding and pumping experience for new moms and families, it was featured in every major news outlet from the BBC to The New Yorker magazine, not only meeting their goals, but also bringing awareness to inequities in U.S. maternity leave policies. The Hackathon set a Guinness World Record for "Most Babies Present at a Hackathon."

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Working with only one single-camera video crew, our approach to was to interview Hackathon organizers and key advisors while filming innovation unfolding in real-time cinema verite style over the 36-hour timespan. 

The hackathon teams worked well into the night. Big prizes did not deter open-source collaboration and open exchange of ideas; concepts such as a 'zip-lock' tubing mechanism and a 'breast pump condom' were prototyped right before our eyes at the Hackathon. For the final presentations each team was required to create a powerpoint presentation, a short video, and a working prototype to present to an audience including a dozen judges comprised of industry leaders and experts. Teams came up with superhero utility belts, compression to replace the suck, and smart objects controlled by mobile phones. 

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