Hackathons — Why Are You Ignoring Competition?

These days it seems like MLH brand collegiate hackathons have some sort of “competition-phobia.” As in, organizers really hate touching on the competition side of things.

Now I agree that these events are better suited for learning, but here’s the thing, hackathons always have at least some competitive aspect to them.

Just like a garden if you let an aspect of an event go untended long enough, it will grow full of weeds and become outdated.

So far, I think we’ve done a pretty good job at innovating and expanding upon stuff like Mentorship, Opening Ceremony, and General Hacking Experience but when’s the last time an organizer has touched the final expo or closing ceremony?

It’s not surprising to me that these areas are rife with issues. For example,

Final Expo:
- Length
- How Many Judges
- Credible Judges (Not Just Some Joe-Smo Who Knows Nothing About Hacking)
- How To Get Every Table Viewed By Everyone That Should View Them (Including Hackers)
- Feedback For The Hacks That Could Use Feedback***
- A Legitimate Standardized Judging Process For The Hacks (Not Just The Hacks That One Or Two Organizers “Liked” The Best)

Closing Ceremony
- Length
- Choosing The Winners
- How To Keep All Of The Other Hackers Invested (They’re Probably Pretty Confused/Upset That Their Hack Didn’t Win By This Point)
- How To Reward The Top Hacks (If These Events Really Are About Learning, Why Are Some Team’s Learning Experience More Rewarded Than Others?)

all seem like after-thoughts these days.

To be honest, I think the first learning-oriented hackathon that really takes a good long look at the competition end of things is going to be legendary. Hell, they might even spur a whole new generation for how hackathons should be run.

But this current policy of just leaving the broken-competition side of hackathons alone, after two years of little to no innovation, is dangerous.

And I know that I kept this article pretty vague. There may very well be hackathons out there that host great closing-ceremonies and final expos. But this is just a general trend I’ve noticed in my hackathon experience.

But I do want to point out that just because competition isn’t a major focus of hackathons anymore doesn’t mean we can just ignore it all together. In fact, I believe updating the competition-end could seriously help the learning side too!

It’s time to get out the weed wackers.