What is the future for hackathons?

I have been to a fair few hackathons and slightly proud that some of them were a bit pioneering. For example I went to the very first National Hack the Government in 2009. Though I had no idea what was going on it was massively enjoyable. Earlier this year I had a bit part as a judge at the Young Rewired State Festival of Code (do sign up to be a mentor by the way) it was brilliant seeing hundreds of children enjoying themselves.

I have even been involved in a few hacks myself. I have hosted the core of National Hack the Government for the last two year. Two years ago we had our own internal data hack at the NAO which was a fabulous event to show the potential of seemingly innocuous, overlooked, data. Last year we NAO, Parliament and ONS created Accountability Hack which is running again this year on 21–22 November.

So is all well in the field of hacks? Sort of yes and sort of no. Clearly there are a lot more of them. Recently I had a notification from the Hackers and Jammers Meet-up group of a slew of events over similar days. They vary from big to small supported/sponsored by a whole range of organisations.

However ‘the word on the street’ is that hacks might be a bit of old hat. Is that true or just for some. Why? Well some are clearly exploitative. Someone told me of a hack for a major fast food chain that was unpaid. Doh so you expect devs to potentially create something new for free, for a company rolling in dollars? That is not going to help anyone. Maybe the same sponsors keep getting approached and sponsor fatigue has set in? Is the problem here not approaching sponsors who have some interest in the topic being covered or the organisations involved?

We are trying to make sure that Accountability Hack in November has something for everything. It is a chance to showcase skills to some key players in public sector. This definitely has led opportunties to work on paid projects. One of the winning projects the ‘PFI explorer’ later came to the NAO to explain to auditors how their project worked, what data sources existed and the other challenges facing looking at this data. If you are keen on accountability this is a bit of a direct pay off.

By having three major organisations involved it means that the scope of projects can be quite wide and varied. As a result Parliament and ONS had great feedback on their data and followed up by tweaking their future plans: I know that we did the same at NAO. Hopefully this benefits everyone using these kinds of data.

Of course there is the fun element as well. I am pretty sure that many of the attendees made new friends and learnt new tools. The buzz on the first morning when teams were formed was amazing. Who will forget the very young Katy presenting her project to a room full of adults at the show and tell. Very inspiring.

So my top tips are:

Run a focussed hack with clear relevant challenges that will chime with the devs

Involve more than one organisation to bring some breadth and range to the data

Approach sponsors with a common interest in the event

Do not clearly be exploitative

Have a great organising team who know how developers work and put their interests first

Provide a nice environment, windows do help and showers

Of course IP stays with the attendees

If we do these things the chances are in the ‘survival of the fittest hack’ the best hack events endure and the dinosaurs go the way of closed data.