Owner: @Penny.Wang @momohou21

Before the Hack

1. Key Steps in Preparation for a Hackathon

Preparation can be really simple depending on your specific event scale and goals. The end goal of the whole planning process is to better engage hackers while equipping them with proper support.

  • Step 1 - finalize and decide your topic, location(online or offline), and target participants.
  • Step 2 - calculate your budget and contact potential partners or sponsors accordingly. Keep step 1 in mind.
  • Step 3 - Make final confirmation with all third-parties and validate all communication materials (both online and offline).
  • Step 4 - Promote your events and prepare offline logistics.
  • Step 5 - The moment of truth and follow up.

2. Topic

Topic is one of the most important things for a successful hackathon and it can impact all the downstream preparation effort. With a clear and specific theme, it will be easy for you to decide who to approach as your target participants and potential partners; it also allows you to customize all the details such as location, event dates, the prize, promotion channel, etc.

3. Location - offline or virtual

For an offline hack, the minimum requirement of the venue would be fast and stable internet connections, other setups such as decoration and furniture simply depends on your budget.

For a virtual hack, all you need is a solid online platform for project submission and voting, and probably also an online meeting room for ceremonies and project demos.

  Pros Cons
offline - Irreplaceable experience of communicating and developing； - Complex logistics; - Limitation imposed by place and time;
virtual - Not restricted by physical location; - Can last for a comparably longer period of time; - No complicated logistics, lower cost; - It might be difficult for participants to find partners online, so it would be hard for lone wolves;

4. Communication and Publicity

Before preparing any materials, you have to determine who is your target participants based on your topic and location. After that we suggest you use “participants = channel x conversion rate” to estimate your final participants.

Although you may think promotion materials like posters and content scripts are critical for participant recruiting, it’s the promotion channel that matters the most to attract the right participants. Here are several tips to help you to get more proper participants for your event:

  • The main message you want to deliver includes location, time, topic, requirements for the participants, prize, partners, mentors and judges.
  • Make sure your register entry is obvious and simple.
  • Connect with locale developer communities and let them help
  • Use hackers that already registered to refer others
  • Holding related warm-up workshops or preparing other learning resources can be a good way to attract high quality participants.
  • Good posters and slogans help.
  • Influential mentors or judges help.
  • More to come…

Plus, a good register questionnaire can help you better understand, engage and manage your participants. You can also do some preliminary screening before the real hack based on your preference. A simple format can be reached here.

5.Partners

Partners are totally optional for most of the hacks. However, holding a hackathon with the right partners may result in more valuable and more interesting results. For example, local developer community can help you to promote your event, experienced experts can join as mentors or judges, entity could be the funder for the rewards, and a cloud service platform could help provide ‘stable and secure’ computing services.

HackathonDAO is a focused and professional sponsor, where they don’t only provide monetary support but also help the organizers to maintain an active community composed of hackathon organizers and volunteers.

On the Hack

1. Team up

As mentioned above, it’s better to let the participants know each other so they could exchange ideas before the real hack day. Useful tools include Discord, Slack, Telegram and more. Different communication methods work best in different scenario, so we don’t have the most efficient way listed here but you are welcome to share your thoughts regarding this problem.

Most likely there will be some hackers without a team on the hack day, you can 1) hold an open-mic and encourage those who have ideas to recruit teammates and 2) hold a coroner for individuals with no teams to connect to each other while making it easier for teams who want to recruit to find them. These can be used for both online and offline events.

2. Projects Submission & Demo

The final demo show is usually the most interesting and exciting part of the whole event, yet it’s also one of the hardest parts of organizing a hackathon since it could be chaotic and embarrassing. Here are some tips for you：

  • Set a clear time limit (3-5mins per project) with an obvious timer visible for the presenters, the judges and all the participants.
  • Always let the participants clarify what’s the incremental change made during the hackathon as some would use their previous projects.
  • Encourage them to show a live demo of their product rather than a deck.
  • Hold a small demo fair after the demos if you have 20+ projects.
  • For online hacks, we have seen a lot of demos employing YouTube + Zoom (or other alternatives) for the final demo and we believe this is a convenient way for everyone and makes project follow-ups easy.
  • Platforms such as hackerlink are very convenient tools for project submission.
  • More to come…

3. Voting and Awards

This is the most critical part of a successful hackathon, and we have listed three of the most prevalent voting methods employed by hackathon organizers below. Please note that you can always combine the voting methods according to your specific event.

  • Judges vote - A limited number of judges will decide the prizes. This is the most traditional and direct way, yet the final decision could be controversial.
  • Hackers vote - every participant will get an opportunity to vote for their favorite projects and the allocation of the final prize would depend on the vote count.
    • Pros - This final decision would be decentralized and diversified, and the more teams would be able to share the final prize.
    • Cons - Susceptible to fraud and collusion.
  • Community vote - let almost everyone vote. In this case, we suggest a quadratic voting mechanism to prevent fraud.
    • Pros - Other than all the advantages of hackers voting, this can provide greater publicity for projects while further expanding your event’s influence in the community..
    • Cons - You need a platform like gitcoin and hackerlink to hold this vote.

4. Further Improving Your Hacking Experience

All hackathon organizers would have tons of advice and tips for you to further improve your hackathon and hacking experiences. Some of them are listed below and you are more than welcome to contribute more!!

  • From @Penny (Dorahacks) - If you have 120+ participants, you should consider holding the hack in several separate venues.
  • From @Penny (Dorahacks) - A countdown timer would increase the sense of competitiveness.
  • From @Momo (Individual) - Water is necessary. And try to take care of people with different eating habits such as vegan or paleo when food is provided.
  • Party/Beer
  • Workshop
  • More to come…

After the Hack

Participants and projects are both valuable rewards of a hackathon. However, we find most of the events neglecting this step, which caused them to miss a great opportunity to expand their community influence or to further develop a project from prototype.

Thus, we invite all of you to share your event results here. Each folder may or may not include their own contact, participants info, final projects and preparation kits. This can help all the subsequent organizers and would attract more opportunities for all participants as well.