How we built HackBU at Binghamton University
In one semester, we sent 100+ students to hackathons, built a 600-person mailing list, consistently drew 50+ to our weekly workshops, and hosted a 250 person hackathon.
Here’s how we did it.
How it all began…
I met Dave Fontenot last summer on a shuttle bus to the Facebook Intern Carnival in Menlo Park. Dave is the founder of MHacks, a 1000+ person hackathon at the University of Michigan. He pitched the event to the entire bus.
The pitch worked. I rounded up 19 BU students in September and joined students from Cornell and Buffalo on the 10+ hour bus ride to Ann Arbor.
The BU students had a great time and a few of them wanted to bring the “hacker culture” back to Binghamton. I agreed and registered hackbu.org in October but waited until the spring semester to properly launch the club.
Spreading the word
I threw together a splash page in early December before students left for break. It was very well received and we collected 500 emails before our first meeting.
It did well for a few reasons.
- We had a team of smart, well-connected students.
- We advertised web development workshops, not the club itself. The “Learn to build websites” call to action was beginner-friendly (so much so that 60% of students of the mailing list were not computer science majors).
- Code.org’s Computer Science Education Week and “Hour of Code” program generated a media buzz in mid-December that we took advantage of by launching that week.
- We reached out to various academic departments and asked them to promote HackBU, tailoring each email to explain the benefits. Graphic design majors, for example, were encouraged to come to our workshops to learn to build their portfolios.
- Learning to code is a popular New Year’s resolution.
- We had a nice looking website that made us look legitimate. (The design standards for student groups are low.)
- Students and alumni happily helped spread the word.
- We asked computer science majors for advice on the Binghamton Computer Science Facebook group.
- We got two shoutouts from Alexis Ohanian when he spoke on campus to a roomful of 400 students. I purchased $30 in Facebook ads right after the event to convert the attendees into registrants.
We recruited a few staff members along the way and built a new (more useful) website.
All this work helped us fill a 150 person lecture hall at our first meeting on February 21.
The mission and plan
We started HackBU to create a “hacker culture” at Binghamton University that promotes self-learning and encourages students to work on side-projects.
We planned to accomplish this by hosting weekly web development workshops, organize trips to hackathons, and host our own hackathon.
The workshops and hackathon trips would help us build a following and prepare students for the HackBU Hackathon in April.
Scaling web development workshops
Peter (one of our staff members) volunteered to teach so we met during winter break to develop a lesson plan. We planned to teach HTML and CSS in the first few weeks then transition to basic JavaScript and jQuery, Git, Ruby, and Ruby on Rails.
We would help students build a personal website in the first half of the semester and a web app in the second half.
Peter got to work. He created slides, sample web apps, and wrote tutorials. The 90-minute workshops would be at 8 p.m. on Thursday nights and each workshop would build upon the previous one. We were going to record all of the lectures for those that couldn’t make it.
Students packed the first workshop, but we quickly realized that our plans wouldn’t work.
The workshop was complete chaos.
We learned that it’s nearly impossible to teach 150 students of various skills and backgrounds. Some students were breezing through the HTML exercises while others struggled to create an index.html file.
We were outnumbered but still encouraged by the attendance.
I got feedback from students and hackathon organizers from other schools before we had a staff meeting to come up with a new plan.
The general consensus was that we shouldn’t try to teach. Instead, we should encourage students to learn, point them to existing resources, and answer their questions. There was no reason to reinvent the wheel when tons of great content exists online.
The new workshops began with an hour of self-learning and ended with a 20-minute presentation. We pointed students to Dash for HTML/CSS lessons and hosted presentations including “How we built hackbu.org” and “Getting your portfolio online.” We also invited student startups founders (such as the team behind Campus Pursuit) to speak about their experiences.
This format worked a lot better. Dash was very well received and students liked its project-based approach to teaching. It teaches students how to build a portfolio which was exactly what we wanted to do.
We even ran a contest, with prizes, to encourage students to build personal websites.
The next few workshops were a lot smoother and consistently drew 50+ students for the rest of the semester. We had many regulars that traveled with us to hackathons and helped us when we hosted our own in April.
Traveling to hackathons
Sending students to hackathons is the easiest way to promote self-learning and encourage side projects. Most of the students have a great time and tell their friends, creating a snowball effect throughout campus.
We decided to organize travel to PennApps, HackPrinceton, and Bitcamp. Each of these hackathons were large (good to impresses beginners and easier to get a bus) and not too far from Binghamton. Sorry, MHacks!
Limiting the number of hackathons we traveled to helped us fill busses and have a strong showing at each. It worked!
We sent ~15 students to PennApps, 29 to HackPrinceton, and 60 to Bitcamp!
Organizing transportation to these hackathons was actually a lot of work. For each hackathon we:
- Created a “HackBU Travel” Google Form to keep track of interested students.
- Sent multiple emails to the HackBU mailing list, computer science list-serv, posted on social media, and promoted the hackathons at the our workshops. We encouraged all of the students to register on the hackathon website and fill out our travel form.
- Contacted the hackathon organizers to get a bus. We carpooled to PennApps, but easily got a bus to HackPrinceton and two busses to Bitcamp.
- Stayed in contact with interested students and kept reminding them to reach out if they could no longer make it.
- Maintained a wait list of students that couldn’t fit on the bus. We were always taking students off the wait list when spots opened up.
It’s inevitable that over 50% of the students will drop. Most of them will drop the day before or the morning of the hackathon.
A few schools have started charging small (~10$) deposits and refunding them to the students that attend the hackathon. It’s an interesting idea but I think it discourages beginners or people that go on a whim.
Marketing our hackathon
The HackBU Hackathon was going to be a 24-hour, 200 person hackathon.
We met as a team and set a date for the hackathon. Before we knew it, there was only a month and a half left to raise several thousand dollars and convince 200 BU students to spend 24 hours in the basement of Academic A.
I threw together a website and asked Jules Forrest, our awesome designer, to create a logo.
The logo, a high tech bearcat (the school mascot), was a huge hit.
Here’s how we marketed the hackathon:
- Ordered 1,000 stickers from Sticker Mule to distribute before and during the hackathon. They looked great and got students talking.
- We constantly talked about it at our weekly meetings and trips to hackathons. The students that traveled to hackathons were excited to see one at BU.
- Ordered a bunch of soft shirts (through Lob) and promised them to attendees.
- Sent out emails (read: spammed) the computer science list-serv.
- Bought a few Facebook ads to promote the event to BU students.
- Went to a few classes to distribute stickers and talk about the event.
- Promised free food, swag, and a good time!
One of the most important parts, in my opinion, was our branding. The hackathon website, logo, and social media presence looked professional and we received tons of compliments.
We opened registrations a week before the event and worked hard to register 300 students. We reached 300 on the last day and hoped 200 students would attend.
The hard work paid off.
250 students attended and, once again, we were blown away by the interest.
I’ve since graduated from Binghamton, but I hope HackBU continues to grow and helps students land jobs and internships at the top tech companies.
I also hope post this encourages you to start or join a similar group at your school. Reach out to other hackathon organizers, read, and attend other hackathons. It’s a huge time commitment but incredibly rewarding.
Have any questions?
Feel free to reach out through Twitter (@_danoc) or shoot me an email.
