I RAN MY FIRST HACKATHON, AND SO CAN YOU!

I Ran My First Hackathon, and So Can You! Here are the lessons I learned from planning, organizing, and executing my first hackathon. The hackathon I ran was the Stupid Shit and Terrible Ideas Hackathon) in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Okay, so first of all, what exactly is a hackathon? I find that when I tell people about hackathons, they assume I am hacking into some mainframe with my hack friends, like some scene out of Hackers.

I define “hackathon” very broadly:

• • • • Hacking is creative problem-solving. (It does not have to be about technology.)
      • A hackathon is any event of any duration where people come together to solve problems or build something.

The idea for the Stupid Shit Hackathon was born out of the idea that tech — specifically corporate tech — can solve any problem with a weekend of hacking. Climate Change — give me four hackers and 48 hours and I can solve that for you. Homelessness — No problem, we’ll start a hackathon and solve that in a jiffy. The Stupid Hackathon was intended to be a meta-hackathon. Self-aware of corporate tech, male dominated self-seriousness I found at most hackathons. The bottom line is that everyone at the event came in order to build stuff for the sheer joy of creation, not for profit or for glory. Okay, enough by my event, let’s talk about yours!

Over the years as my career as a Software Engineer, I had attended dozens of hackathons, but until now, I had not organized one on my own. I learned a ton through trial and error, research (see resources below), friends (Ray Farias, Jon and Kelli Borgonia, Jason Sewell, Russel Cheng and Victor Lee). I am by no means an expert, but here are the lessons I learned from organizing my first hackathon ever. I hope it helps and encourages other new hackathon organizers to run an amazing event.

In this article, I will cover the following:

1. How to get prepared for your hackathon
2. How to market your hackathon
3. How to get sponsors
4. How to run the kickoff ceremonies
5. What to do during the hackathon
6. How to run the final presentations and award ceremony
7. What to do after your hackathon

A couple of notes before we dig in:

• • • • The event I organized had about 60 people in attendance, if you are planning an event with 100 people or more, you are probably on a whole other level and you will need to do a lot more prep work. I would recommend checking out the Hackathon Guide for details on how to run an event with lots of people in attendance.
      • This was a Stupid Shit and Terrible Ideas hackathon, which by its very nature is a very nonstandard hackathon. We wanted to create more of a collaborative and warm vibe so that all of our entrants have fun, but hopefully you can bring the positive and welcoming vibes to your hackathon.
      • This was the first hackathon I ever ran — I definitely still have lots to learn in regards to running a smooth, diverse and inclusive event, but I am trying my hardest.
      • I am a software engineer, not a lawyer. Do not take anything I say here as legal advice.

HOW TO GET PREPARED FOR YOUR HACKATHON

There’s so much to do before your hackathon. Here are some easy ways to get prepared ahead of time.

THINK TO YOURSELF — WHAT DO YOU WANT TO GET OUT OF RUNNING THIS EVENT

Do you want to promote your business? Acquire new talent? Generate new ideas? Solve a problem? Make some stupid shit? Whatever your reason, just know that hackathons are not the be all end all. Hackathons should be used in conjunction with a larger strategy to promote your objectives.

You might not even want to run a hackathon, I would suggest reading, So You Think You Want to Run a Hackathon? Think Again by Laurenellen McCann for thoughts on other (and sometimes better) ways of engaging a community.

ASSEMBLE A DIVERSE ORGANIZING TEAM

Assemble a diverse team just like the Avengers.

If you want to attract a diverse audience, you will want your organizing team to reflect the audience that you hope to attract. For my hackathon, I don’t think that I did a great job at doing of getting together a diverse team, and for my next event, this is something that I really want to focus on improving.

SETUP COMMUNICATION FOR YOUR ORGANIZING TEAM

For our hackathon, we created a Slack channel for the organizing team to talk about our tasks. This has worked great for communicating in real time with the team and with the attendees during the hackathon. We were also able to use this Slack account for the team during the hackathon, to organize their own teams and to send out live updates to the teams while they were hacking.

FIND A VENUE TO HOST YOUR EVENT AND RESERVE THE DATE

This is the only thing you need to do significantly in advance of the event. The earlier you can reserve space the better. When looking for a space to host your hackathon, be sure to find a venue that can provide:

• • • • Proper seating
      • One power strip per table
      • Wifi (is it fast and reliable? can it connect all of your participants? does it block any ports?)
      • Projector
      • A microphone, at least in large rooms
      • Accessible entrances and wheelchair-friendly seating space (and if there is a stage, check if it is accessible, if applicable)
      • Gender-neutral, single-occupancy, accessible bathrooms
      • Is food allowed in your venue
      • Is not in the middle of nowhere

Venues are typically very expensive. If you are reserving a professional space like a banquet or conference center, it can run you anywhere from $10 to $40 a head. For our hackathon, we were lucky enough to be sponsored by a local government agency that supports tech growth in Hawaii, HTDC. It might be worthwhile to try and find a place that is willing to sponsor your space, this will especially be easier if your hackathon is for a good cause. If you are running a corporate hackathon, you might be out of luck.

PICKING A DATE FOR YOUR HACKATHON

Picking a date for your event is actually really hard. There are many things that you will want to keep in mind. First of all, look at a calendar of other similar events. You do not want to pick a date when all of your developers are at a big local conference if you are trying to attract a large number of developers. You will also want to avoid:

• • • • Holidays
      • Summer (especially late summer) — This is especially hard for parents
      • Major events in your area (especially other tech events or conferences)

Have it on a weekend — trust us — just do it. Nobody can jam during the week.

Picking a date about 6 months ahead was really helpful for us. We were able to stake a claim on a date before anyone else had a chance to take the great event dates. If you have the ability, be sure to reserve your date as early as you possibly can. We never regretted planning our event so early.

FOOD

Okay, here are some guidelines for selecting food for your hackathon:

• • • • The first rule of picking food for a hackathon is “No Pizza”. Pizza is just about the most unhealthy thing you can eat, and tech people eat it at 90% of the events they go to. I have a confession to make, I had pizza at my hackathon. I know, I know, I hate pizza at hackathons, but money was short, and pizza is the cheapest thing you can order for a large group of people.
      • You usually halfway healthy food, right? Order food that you would actually eat if you weren’t at a hackathon.
      • Provide options for people with dietary restrictions. Something I did not do well at my hackathon was providing options for vegetarians, people with allergies, or people with other dietary restrictions. Be sure to have food for everyone.
      • Provide coffee and light pastries and/or fruit for breakfast.
      • Make sure you have lots of water throughout the whole day.
      • Sugar and caffeine are okay. Soda and energy drinks are usually appreciated.
      • Budget about $20 to $40 per head per day for food.
      • When ordering food, be sure to order it at least a couple of days before the event.

Alright, one final thought, for a small event or a non-profit event, food can be optional. Food was the most expensive part aspect of our hackathon, and I would have rather allocated money for swag for everybody, or more inclusive prizes for the winners. For my next hackathon, I would will questions whether we need to provide full meals for the participants or not.

REGISTRATION

When your participants are signing up for your event is a great time to collect preliminary information about the audience of your hackathon. For our event, we set up an Eventbrite registration form, you can easily collect as much info as you want with it. This worked great for our free event. Hackathon.guide has some great suggestions for types of information that you should be looking to collect on the registration form.

• • • • Name (and possibly other information as required by venue security)
      • Email address
      • Job title
      • Are they new to hackathons?
      • What kind of hacker are they? Examples: Developer. Designer. Data Scientist. Domain Expert. Government Staff. Communicator. Project Manager. Advocate.
      • What are they interested in hacking on? (free form question)
      • Are they interested in any of the workshops?
      • How they heard about the event
      • Special needs/requests

This information you can collection ahead of time, the better you can plan and prepare.

One final note, according to the Hackathon Guide, “For a free event, about 65% of those who register will actually show up. This number is very consistently seen across events. So cap registration at 150% of your actual maximum capacity.”

LEGAL STUFF

Be sure your organization is adequately insured for the event, venue and any other liability (lost or stolen goods at the event, injuries, etc.). While people aren’t likely to be skateboarding or sword-fighting at hackathons, it’s always better to be prepared for the worst.

HOW TO MARKET A HACKATHON

Okay, so you have been doing all this planning for your big event, but now you actually want people to show up and participate in your event? How the heck do you get people to show up? Well, you gotta get the word out on the street, that’s how! As an engineer, marketing an event is something that I naturally suck at. This was actually a great chance to up my marketing skills.

One note, your marketing plan should be put together in order to fit your objectives for the hackathon. Do you want to reach a particular audience? Do you want to get a massive numbers of submissions? Do you want to attract the top talent in the industry? Do you want to simply promote your brand? Be sure to keep your objectives in mind as you are developing your marketing plan.

MAKE A WEBSITE

You’re running a hackathon, you have got to make a website for your event. This is important for so many reasons. One, make it easy for people to get information about your event. Two, you are going to need it to get sponsors (see below). Your website should cover the following:

• • • • Make it look professional — this is the site your sponsors will be looking at when deciding if they want to give you money.
      • The who, what, when, where, and why’s of your event (duh).
      • Start and end dates
      • Location
      • Information about parking
      • Reminder about materials needed for the event (laptop, charger, camera, etc)
      • Schedule of events during the day
      • Food that will be provided (if applicable)
      • Times of workshops or training sessions before the event
      • The Code of Conduct
      • Information about the previous years event (if applicable)
      • Information about your sponsors.
      • Contact information for the organizers
      • Link to Eventbrite registration form

SOCIAL MEDIA

Alright, this is a tech event, you basically gotta have an online presence for your hackathon. You should have at least a Twitter account, and a Facebook event page.

Twitter

• • • • Create a twitter account for your event
      • Choose a hashtag for your event
      • Encourage people during the event to follow your events Twitter if they want to be updated about future events.

Facebook Group/Event

• • • • Facebook pages and events are a great way to interact with the community. I have found that people feel more comfortable posting to Facebook event pages then Twitter pages for Hackathons, but that could just be the community I am in.

TRAINING WORKSHOPS

If you want to attract a lot of people that are new to programming or if you anticipate that many of your participants will be new programmers, than having training workshops leading up to the start date of your event is a great way.

Offer a variety of workshops to the public, with a variety of languages and topics. Marketing them as low pressure workshop will help lower the barrier of entry many people feel when considering joining a hackathon.

PRIZES

I find that prizes can be a great way to market your event, but you need to be careful about the prizes you offer, as they can severely affect the mood of your event. For example, large cash prizes can make the event more competitive, which might turn off lots of inexperienced programmers, future programmers, and future technical leaders. The folks over at Major League Hacking wrote up a much better article than I could ever hope to write about how to select “good” prizes for your event. I encourage you to check out their take on what makes a great or terrible hackathon prizes.

SWAG

Swag is a great way to do some guerrilla marketing for your event.

Here are some great example of good swag for your event:

Stickers

• • • • Making exclusive stickers. Devs love putting stickers on their laptops, water bottles, children, bosses. Basically, we put them everywhere.

T-Shirts

• • • • Don’t get those crappy one size fits all t-shirts though, nobody like that shit. In fact, read Hopper Conference Diversity Guide’s section on t-shirts.

WORD OF MOUTH

This last one is huge, but be sure to get the word out about your hackathon with your mouth. Tell everybody you know, talk about it all the time. Get comfortable with asking your friends and acquaintances to come to your event. Lots of the traffic at my event was due to word of mouth.