How did I get here, anyway?

Why a government major is organizing a 750+ student hackathon at the University of Maryland, College Park

Two months ago, I didn’t know what a hackathon was. Today, I’m co-directing a team of organizers planning a hackathon for over 750 students from across the country, negotiating sponsorship with multiple companies a day, and deliberating hackathon values over dinner.

How did that happen?

I usually explain hackathons to non-technical people like this: “Hackathons are weekend-long events where students are encouraged to come with an idea and finish with a product.” Nothing too fancy in the description. I then throw in an emphasis on coding and entrepreneurship. [Note: Dave Fontenot, founder of MHacks, gives a detailed overview of hackathons.]

I got involved with Bitcamp (University of Maryland’s hackathon) like anyone with little experience and little time gets involved running a huge event: through the subtle manipulation of friends. (Or, as Chris O’Neil of MPowered put it at HackCon, “We take people who are not qualified for jobs, and then we give them those jobs.”) The other organizers knew me from my position as Director at Startup Shell, a student-run startup incubator and coworking space at the University of Maryland, College Park. I like management and operations, and I like reaching out to organizations and university officials. I also like to get things done. They knew it was only a matter of time before I saw something that needed to be done with Bitcamp, and then just ended up doing it myself.

It turns out, you don’t actually need to go to a hackathon to be able to organize one. (Though I am going to PennApps in two weeks!) It’s the skill set and mindset that matter, not the experience or major. As a government student, I can write and otherwise communicate fairly effectively. I usually follow through with actions. That seems to be enough to be able to manage a sponsorship team, a budget, and otherwise supervise.

More government majors (and non-CS majors) should run hackathons. Tess Rinearson wrote a great article about making hackathons more inclusive, and I’m here to say that hackathon organization teams should be more inclusive, as well. I sometimes bring a fresh perspective to our planning efforts (or I say something that everyone agrees would never work).

Organizing a hackathon and attending a hackathon are two very different things: the former requires excellent time-management skills, oral and written skills, persistence, follow-through and organizational skills; the latter requires (at least basic) programming or design knowledge, extreme endurance, and pitching skills. It is not always necessary to have a crossover between the two skill sets for every member of your organizing team. And, there are some important skill sets, like writing, negotiation strategy, and financial planning, that non-technical majors typically have a lot of experience in from internships, interests, and courses.

As for the mindset, the most important quality is that an organizer loves hackathons. It’s a lot (and I mean a lot) of time to put toward something. It will be your life for months. I dreamed about sponsorship emails last night. They fill my inbox (and apparently my dreams) by the dozens. I would not be a happy camper if I did not love what I was doing.

What is politics but managing a months-long campaign on little sleep, little organization, and little money? What is politics but managing a team of volunteers and employees, coordinating and placating a multitude of competing interests, and fundraising like your life depends on it? And what is politics but networking, networking, networking? I’ve certainly never taken a politics class with the political lessons I am learning from Bitcamp.

To all non-technical majors: don’t be afraid to organize a hackathon. You bring essential skills to the table. What you don’t know, you can learn. Hackathons encourage learning by doing, and whether you’re an organizer or a hacker, a government or computer science major, you’ll leave with more useful skills and contacts than anything you could get from the classroom.