How to Run a Company Hackathon in 6 Simple Steps
- 1. Define the hackathon objectives In order for a hackathon to be successful, you need to have a single, clearly defined objective. Without clear objectives, you’ll be unable to provide participants with clear direction. ...
- 2. Prepare the event Once the final objectives are clear, the next step is to prepare the event. ...
- 3. Design the event ...
- 4. Promote the hackathon ...
- 5. Inspire and train participants
- Strengthen the community that the hackathon is for.
- Be welcoming to newcomers to the community.
- Provide an opportunity for participants to learn something new.
- Provide a space and a time for participants to make headway on problems they are interested in.
How to organize and run your own hackathon?
Prepare the event
- Defining the correct format for your hackathon. Internal hackathons - These are organized by a business for its own employees and are used to promote intrapreneurship, boost employee engagement, and ...
- Setting your terms and conditions. ...
- Creating a website and system for managing registrations. ...
- Creating a workback schedule. ...
How to prepare for your first hackathon?
How to prepare for your first hackathon 3 min read
- Gather the team. Getting a good team together for a Hackathon is half the work for a great experience. ...
- Do your research. The moment you register, you’ll probably get blasted with emails from the organizer detailing the rules and the program of the event.
- Prepare your coding environment. ...
- Prepare your GitHub. ...
- Take time to explore the community. ...
How to organize a successful hackathon?
Tips for Organizing a Successful Hackathon
- Tips for Organizing a Successful Hackathon
- Select a style. A hackathon must have a style. ...
- Participate in hackathons prior to you start proposing. ...
- It requires time to strategy. ...
- Discover sponsors. ...
- Schedule the venue. ...
- Produce a web presence. ...
- Find participants. ...
- Find the right judges. ...
- Do not forget the cool prize. ...
What do you actually do at a hackathon?
“At a hackathon, you go in and you might have an idea already or you can hear other people’s ideas and join a team. Then, with your idea, you work to create something that that solves a problem or that makes your life better or somebody else’s life better in some way, shape or form.
How do I run a successful hackathon?
To make sure your first hackathon goes off without a hitch, use the following hackathon ideas.What is a hackathon? ... Pick the right venue. ... Build the anticipation. ... Set up judging criteria and choose your judges. ... Order food and drinks. ... Ensure you have the right equipment. ... Allow for plenty of setup time and preparation.More items...•
How do you host a good hackathon?
Top-10 tips to organize hackathon onlineFigure out the goal of your hackathon. ... Think about the correct date for your hackathon. ... Try to recruit sponsors for your hackathon. ... Notify your participants in advance. ... Maybe limit the number of participants. ... Think through the way you segregate people into groups.More items...
What Makes a Good hackathon team?
Most hackathon teams are usually made up of three to six people and a strong team typically has members with complementary skill sets—a project manager, a few coders, someone to focus on design, etc, etc.
What are the basic requirements of hackathon?
You're usually required to come up with a team of around 2-6 members where the participants can be students, professionals, etc. and the duration of the event can be from 24 hours to 4 days (depends on Hackathon type)....Domain Expertise. ... Designing. ... Frontend Development. ... Backend Development. ... Project Management.
What are the stages of a hackathon?
7 steps to a successful hackathonStep 1: Participate in hackathons.Step 2: Choose an interesting topic.Step 3: Planning is the key to a successful hackathon.Step 4: Set the agenda and rules.Step 5: Announce your event well in advance.Step 6: Appreciate the ideas and vote on the winning idea.More items...•
How do you make a hackathon fun?
Here are 6 elements that make hackathons fun and how you can do them for your own event....Enhancing kids' coding skills do not have to be drab, but rather inserting certain elements can make it super fun for everyone.Competition. ... Toys to Code. ... Game Jams. ... Snacks and Treats. ... Mentors. ... Ending With Prizes.
How do you structure a hackathon?
How to Plan a Successful HackathonTurn it over to the individuals. If you think that this is a time for managers and executives to push their ideas or get extra work out employees, your hackathon will surely fail. ... Define judging criteria. ... Choose your judges wisely. ... Make the hackathon fun. ... Go all out for the final event.
What is the purpose of a hackathon?
The purpose of a hackathon is a for a group of programmers to work together on a collaborative project. Most hackathons are competitions where several teams are competing to create prototypes that innovate on a theme or improve upon an existing project.
How do you manage a hackathon team?
Congratulations, leading a team in a hackathon can be an exhilarating, terrifying experience. Create minimum (but not zero) formal communications and lots of informal routes with ways to find out information. Slack is a great suggestion along with periodic all-team checkins/reports.
How do I prepare for my first hackathon?
Essential How-to-Prepare-for-a Hackathon:Do your Research & Plan: Do your research on the topic or theme in advance so you're prepared. ... Team Formation: ... Picking a Theme : ... Ask questions: ... Brainstorming Ideas: ... Prioritize features: ... Prototyping: ... Start working:More items...•
How long does a hackathon last?
24–48 hoursHackathons typically last 24–48 hours, and the time will fly (especially if you want time for meals and sleep!). Get a general sense of who on your team will work on what, and approximately how long you expect it to take. Timebox tasks, noting when you will “just move on,” even if you can't get things to work.
How do I run a virtual hackathon?
Here are the steps to hosting an effective virtual hackathon.Concoct a theme. ... Decide who can participate. ... Choose a date. ... Select judges and pick prizes. ... Promote the event. ... Track registrations. ... Plan time for fun. ... Host your virtual hackathon.More items...•
What is the objective of hackathon?
The goal of a hackathon is to create functioning software or hardware by the end of the event. Hackathons tend to have a specific focus, which can include the programming language used, the operating system, an application, an API, or the subject and the demographic group of the programmers.
How do I host a hackathon online?
Planning overviewBuild your Online Hackathon Website and Registration Form.Set up an effective outreach campaign.Apply a human-centered design thinking approach.Online meetings via webinars.Select the best ideas and announce the teams.Milestones, technical support, and project submission.Judging period.More items...
How much does it cost to host a hackathon?
Typical budgets can range anywhere from $5,000 to $80,000. You'll need to customize the hackathon to work for your needs and goals.
How do you judge hackathon?
How To Judge A Hackathon: 5 Criteria To Pick WinnersDoes this have business value? First things first. ... Will it make an impact? A copycat idea doesn't impress anyone. ... Is it realistic? ... Have the team innovated to build this product?
Demystifying hackathons
Over 80% of Fortune 100 companies conduct hackathons to drive innovation. More than 50% of the hackathons are recurring events, indicating that they are a reliable tool for sustained innovation.
What is a hackathon?
Hackathon is a tool to drive sustained innovation and crowdsource solutions to address pressing real-life business problems and social issues. A hackathon is typically a time-bound competitive event where participants collaborate to build proofs of concept and minimum viable products for a specific pre-defined problem or to innovate.
Why should you conduct a hackathon?
Hackathons have some clear advantages over traditional innovation management processes. They are inclusive, agile, promote multidisciplinary collaboration, and have shorter innovation cycles that are better suited to addressing fast-changing consumer demands.
How can you organize a hackathon?
The entire process of organizing a hackathon, marketing the event, driving registrations, ideating, and creating prototypes typically takes 30 to 40 days. An innovation program cannot get more agile than this.
What is an internal hackathon?
Conducted only for employees, internal hackathons give them the freedom to forget about everyday responsibilities and restrictions and build something innovative. Teams collaborate to develop a proposal, build a prototype, and pitch ideas to senior management to secure funding or win recognition.
What are the benefits of internal hackathons?
Internal hackathons are an excellent way to drive innovation within the company. If done well, periodic hackathons can help to
What are the basic steps of an internal hackathon?
Companies need to find themes that are fun for the employees yet in line with business goals.
A SparkPost Tradition
Since 2013 I have had the honor and pleasure of organizing our company-wide hackathons which we hold twice a year. Our most recent one was earlier this month. These hackathons provide a fantastic opportunity for engineers to take a break from the normal day to day priorities of shipping new features and otherwise supporting our cloud service.
Hackathon Format
Our SparkPost hackathon is a two day event — we run from Thursday morning through demos and awards on Friday afternoon. We usually have about fifteen teams that add their group to the sign-up sheet. Each team has 3 or 4 staff members, though there are those lone wolf entries that can be quite brilliant, and exceptions for teams of 5 are possible.
Hackathon Demos and Judging
Presentations should include a live demo, but may include other communication methods such as a slide-deck, and often include some good humor. With 15 teams it’s important to be strict with timekeeping. A panel of three judges will pick the winners in 5 separate categories:
Run a Hackathon: Start Your Own Tradition
Our employee hackathons are a great tradition here at SparkPost. Our hackathons cultivate innovation and we have successfully applied learnings to how we build and support a better product. I hope you find this inspiring enough for you to start a hackathon at your company. And, as always we are looking for bright people to join our team.
What is a Hackathon?
A hackathon is a fast paced and time bound collective effort to create a solution for a specific problem. They can also help create a solution to a specific opportunity.
How To Run A Hackathon
For hackathons to be effective, there are several factors that it is worth considering:
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1. Define the hackathon objectives
In order for a hackathon to be successful, you need to have a single, clearly defined objective. Without clear objectives, you’ll be unable to provide participants with clear direction.
2. Prepare the event
Once the final objectives are clear, the next step is to prepare the event.
3. Design the event
Once you’ve finished the prep work for your hackathon, you can start designing the event itself.
5. Inspire and train participants
If you want the hackathon to result in high-quality final projects, inspiration and training of participants and mentors is crucial. If you do this properly, you can also raise awareness about the event objectives and manage the expectations of your participants.
6. Make it fun
Even if your organization’s brand is strong, you need to make your hackathon appealing to the desired audience.
Welcoming newcomers
The hardest thing about running a successful hackathon is being welcoming to newcomers and helping them get involved in an activity.
Hacking
The hacking track is for participants to dive into problems. Often groups of 2-5 individuals form around a project, such as building a new data visualization, writing a document, or collaboratively investigating a problem. Participants take out their laptops, connect to power and wifi, and get working.
Training
A successful hackathon might be just hacking, just training, or both hacking and training.
Venue & date
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.
Sponsorship
For large events, you will probably need sponsors to help you cover the costs.
Food
Ideally you should provide coffee and light fare for breakfast and beverages throughout the day (especially water). Food is surprisingly expensive though, so do what you can.
Swag
Some events like to provide swag, like t-shirts or stickers. Personally I think there are much better ways to spend your budget, but if you really want to provide swag keep in mind–
So what are hackathons?
Hackathons are, firstly and foremostly, programming competitions, or coding challenges to solve a given problem. They are, essentially, marathons of using tech to ‘hack’ real world problems (hence the term ‘hack’a’thon’). Organised throughout the world and throughout the year, they can be either:
How do hackathons work?
Well, there are so many variables that it’s impossible to give a one size fits all response to this question. However, here are some typical moments in a hackathon:
Benefits of hackathons
For someone working to transition into tech, hackathons are an actual gold mine; they truly are the gift that keeps on giving. Here’s how you can benefit from participating:
What do you need to participate in a hackathon?
The good news is that everyone can take part in a hackathon – as successful teams need to have several perspectives represented, and a variety of professionals on board. Here are some of the options:
Leverage your hackathon experience in your job search
Once you’ve attended a hackathon (and slept it off), here’s what you can, and should, do to leverage it to benefit your job search:
What is a hackathon?
We associate most hackathons today with software developers and hungry entrepreneurs, but organizations everywhere are using hackathons to solve challenges. Look around you, and you are bound to spot competitions in music, fashion, dance, architecture, and other disciplines to create a project in a short amount of time.
What makes hackathons so appealing?
So just what do all these events really have in common? And what has made them so popular? The answer seems to be in the so-called "hackathon culture" that they promote.
How to run a hackathon
Running a successful hackathon is chiefly about a robust and well-formulated challenge, an engaged crowd, and securing the right infrastructure. Whether digital or physical, every hackathon follows roughly the same process: preparation, team creation, creative problem solving, and, finally, presentations and awards. Below, we break down the steps:
Summary
To sum up, hackathons represent an interactive form of collaboration that is, undoubtedly, here to stay.
Hackathons Defined
How to Run A Hackathon in 7 Steps
- Great, so... you see the value and want to run a hackathon for your organization. How do you make it happen as a development manager? In short, just follow the seven steps in the diagram below starting with crafting a pitch and scheduling it all the way to productizing a hack. Keep reading for more details on each of these important steps.
Wrapping Up The Hackathon
- As a development manager, one important aspect of your job is keeping people engaged, inspired and stoked. Hackathons are one of the many ways you can achieve this goal. Giving developers autonomy and opportunity to master a new technology and infusing the business with fresh ideas are well within your grasp if you follow the seven practical steps described here. Let us know if t…
A SparkPost Tradition
Hackathon Format
- Our SparkPost hackathon is a two day event — we run from Thursday morning through demos and awards on Friday afternoon. We usually have about fifteen teams that add their group to the sign-up sheet. Each team has 3 or 4 staff members, though there are those lone wolf entries that can be quite brilliant, and exceptions for teams of 5 are possible. All members of the CTO organi…
Hackathon Demos and Judging
- Presentations should include a live demo, but may include other communication methods such as a slide-deck, and often include some good humor. With 15 teams it’s important to be strict with timekeeping. A panel of three judges will pick the winners in 5 separate categories: 1. Product: A new or improved product or feature, including end-user tools ...
and The Winner Is…
- All category winners receive a commemorative mug or water bottle. One of the 5 category winners is also selected as an overall “Best in Show” winner. Besides bragging rights, the “Best in Show” winning team gets the perpetual trophy cup which has their names engraved on it. The judges may pick a “Runner Up” or “Honorable Mention” for any project that didn’t win the category. The …
Run A Hackathon: Start Your Own Tradition
- Our employee hackathons are a great tradition here at SparkPost. Our hackathons cultivate innovation and we have successfully applied learnings to how we build and support a better product. I hope you find this inspiring enough for you to start a hackathon at your company. And, as always we are looking for bright people to join our team. If solving problems with super smart …