

Hackathon Hacks for Organizers - AlexeyMK
http://alexeymk.com/2012/10/12/hackathon-organizers-hacks.html

======
theyCallMeSwift
Couldn't agree more with everything said in this article. Well done.

I want to reiterate on the fact that multi-tier demoing just does not work.
While the prizes and judging are important pieces of every hackathon, they
really are not the main focus. These events are about enabling hackers to show
off their skills and experiment in a fun, safe enviornment. When you start
grouping hacks into "the best" and "the rest", you end up with the focus being
on the product rather than the people. And that fundamentally sucks.

~~~
pulak
A number of hackathons have done this to great success. If you want to expand
a hackathon beyond ~40 teams, you do need to figure out a way to structure
demos better, since less 2 minutes per demo is too little time to really show
off what you built, in my opinion. And I don't think it's a poor idea to go
beyond 40 teams for a hackathon like this (because then you have to start
being super selective of who you let in, which sucks for teams who are new to
hackathons).

~~~
theyCallMeSwift
I totally agree that short demos don't do these hackers justice and that being
selective on admission also not an attractive option either. In fact, I'm not
sure if there actually is a best answer for how to handle the situation. On
some level, you always end up having to pick the lesser of three evils and
somebody always ends up getting left out because of it.

If I do come up with a good system, I assure you, you'll be the first to know!

------
gailees
I rallied together and went with about 25 Michigan Hackers to PennApps this
past year....what an amazing experience.

Many of the students had never built anything outside of class and almost all
of them left the event feeling inspired beyond belief; one of the first-time
teams won an award and has since turned their hack into a full-fledged startup
here at the TechArb in Ann Arbor!

Great post - will definitely take this into account when planning the
hackathons here at Michigan!

~~~
zan2434
I'm loving what you Michigan guys are doing; met you guys at PennApps and
HackNY. Great work at both hackathons. Which hack from PennApps are they
turning into a full-fledged startup?

------
jefflinwood
Just did the TwilioCon hackathon on Wednesday - the organizers set it up with
two demo stands (left and right sides of the stage) and a dedicated A/V guy -
while one team was demoing, they were getting the other side set up. As soon
as one was done, the next team was introduced and the video was switched.
AFAICT it worked perfectly.

That hackathon got through 47 demos in about an hour - 60 seconds for a 6 hour
hack was actually probably the right amount of time.

~~~
jf
Well, it didn't go _perfectly_ but I'm glad that it appeared that way!

The fixed setup that Alexey proposes in his article is totally the way to go.
I totally agree with him when he says not to plug in "somebody else's laptop
into the projector." He is correct when he says that "Pain this way lies."

Frankly, the only reason we were able to pull off the TwilioCon presentations
is because we had 9+ people dedicated to them: 1 MC, 4 presentation assistants
(2 per podium), 1 A/V guy up front, 2 A/V guys in back (1 to run the switching
equipment, 1 to run the timer), and 1 other A/V guy to mix the sound.

(A good A/V tech is worth their weight in gold. Make sure you always let your
A/V techs know how much you appreciate their work.)

------
ggopman
Great post by Alexey, but I must admit I'm disappointed he didn't incorporate
any of the insights we use at AngelHack to sustain hackathons of 400+
attendees( walkie talkies, rated video submissions for cutting down demos,
hackathon.io for team building and seamless communications, helicopters and
nerf guns for fun, massage tables and endless candy as added amenities).

There's also a lot to be said for the handholding that goes into working with
sponsors. Those sponsor dollars don't come as easy as you would think. Perhaps
there'll be a follow-up post :)

~~~
AlexeyMK
Hey Greg!

Glad you liked the post. There were definitely some pretty cool ideas from the
AngelHack I went to; I missed the walkie-talkies, which is a pretty nifty
idea. I've also got a backlog of like 30 or 40 more hacks that I can write
about, but the post was sort of getting long enough as it was. I may end up
doing a follow-up at some point.

As for fundraising/charging participants: Both back in my day at PennApps, and
with the organizers that run it now, have never had a problem raising funds to
cover the cost of the event (learning how to fund-raise is actually an awesome
way for CS majors to learn about the business side of things). I have no idea
what fundraising for the non-college circuit is like, though, since recruiting
is a less-obvious selling point for sponsors.

~~~
ggopman
Here's a full breakdown on hack sponsorships...maybe it'll make it in your
next post ;)

HACK SPONSORSHIPS

Non-college hackathons are sponsored mostly from Platform Marketing
departments that want developers to use their toolkits. Inspired by "the
greats" like Twilio and 10gen, most developer tool companies are looking for
ways to get their tools known and used by developers and are willing to pay to
do it. Good examples are: Heroku, Pusher, Apigee, Mashery, Cloudmine,
Mailchimp, Box, Firebase, Pearson, New Relic.

Some like Apigee will only sponsor if they can be the top prized API or
headline sponsor for the event. Some like Mashery will try to convince you
that they don't have money (they do), but that they'll bring a bunch of people
to your event (they wont), others like Microsoft will pay if you can integrate
an appealing Windows 8 vertical, and then there are those like New Relic who
will sponsor if they believe you are doing good for the community and want to
show support #nerdlife (this is an extremely rare breed though, so don't count
on finding too many like this). There are lots of Platform marketing teams out
there with a lot of different budgets and reasons to sponsor. If you can align
your hackathon with their initiatives then you can land some good ones.

After that, there's recruiting -- The recruiting bucks come easy if you're a
top tier engineering school. Most of the big companies I know only want to
hire top devs and will pay for creative ways like this to brand themselves to
them. The only non-college hacks a recruiting sponsor will pay for are the
mega hackathon events that bring everyone out of the woodworks - (ex. Photo
Hack Day, Disrupt Hackathon, AngelHack).

Lastly, there is sponsorships from organizations sponsoring entrepreneurship
(Kauffman, BizSpark, Google Entrepreneurship, Ford). These deals normally take
6-18 months, but are completely worth it if you can land one. They cut monster
checks (normally 6-7 figures) and will guarantee the growth and sustainability
of your event. However, you have to prove you're creating a scalable model for
entrepreneurship (ex. StartX, AngelList).

And should all else fail there are ticket sales. If you're scrappily putting
your hackathon together, want to see it scale (which means hiring people to
help organize), and you don't have big entrepreneurship sponsors onboard yet,
then you should probably charge for tickets. Either that or be willing to pay
out of your own pocket if ANYTHING goes wrong…. and like most events, it
almost always does...

~~~
ajotwani
Thanks Greg. Great plug to promote your next hackathon. You absolutely know
how to draw big dollar sponsors in for hackathons. Kudos to you for that.

For us, hackathons are not about money. We prefer to partner and co-host
hackathons with companies to who have similar values and credibility among
developers that they've earned by participating and forming deep links into
the developer community. These include but are not limited to Twilio,
SendGrid, TokBox, Hacker League. We've all earned developer credibility over
the years by helping developers on the ground, not by buying our way in.

We serve developers earnestly and will continue to do so at events and with
partners that are aligned with our values.

Amit - Mashery

------
vitno
went to pennApps... even a little attention to gluten-free would have been
nice.

~~~
jrubinovitz
In the past, PennApps organizers went out of the way to cater to my dietary
needs (dairy-free), but I think it was too big for that this year. Maybe
allergen inclusion on the registration form could have informed organizers on
the ratio of different foods they could get?

