Just another hackathon?

TL;DR

We’re running our first hackathon, Falcon Hacks, for developers to come together, get to know some of our portfolio companies, and solve some really cool problems. Join us!

—

It seems like as humans, we love hype and we’re always jumping on some bandwagon. We’re blockchain, machine learning and AR crazy. These buzzwords trigger some inexplicable reaction in people. You know what other buzzword people are always throwing around? Hackathons. So, what is a hackathon?

There are 3 types of people that I’ve come across recently:

1. People who think a hackathon consists of people sitting in a group and discussing solutions to a specific problem, but this has actually been coined ideathon (IMO it’s an upgraded version of brainstorming)
2. People who think a hackathon is people coming together to build things (robots, websites, apps, etc.)
3. And my personal favorite, people who think you hack computers and servers in a hackathon

Mr. Robot anyone?

Which of these groups is correct? If we trust dictionary.com then the second definition is the correct one (can you tell from the way I wrote the types which group I fall into?)

We know that Dubai hosts a variety of hackathons and we know that they offer great prizes. Let’s be honest, who doesn’t love great prizes?

Well Stack Overflow just released their 2018 developer survey results and they asked “Why do developers participate in hackathons?” and an overwhelming 76.3% responded “Because I find it enjoyable” while only 18.9% chose “To win prizes or cash awards”. I’ve been told on multiple occasions by different people that this isn’t the case in Dubai, that the prize is the only reason anyone participates in hackathons in Dubai. I find that difficult to believe.

There is nothing intrinsically different when it comes to developers in the Middle East. I believe that a hackathon should be an event where like-minded people of different ages come together to “hack” things together to solve a set of problems. I believe that hackathons should be an experience where people come together to have fun and share their knowledge with other developers; you learn and you teach. Hackathons shouldn’t be about who is the best, but how we can have fun and solve problems at the same time.

So we thought, why don’t we host our own hackathon, build a community of developers, get to know this community while we work on some of the problems our portfolio companies set out to solve. Whether you’re curious about password managers, frustrated with the difficulty of making rental payments, interested in finding innovative solutions for the insurance and HR sectors, wondered about real applications of speech analysis for business or just passionate about the state of technology in the real estate space; our portfolio companies are the ones you should come and meet. Come and help us show that the incentive to participate in a hackathon is having fun and building great things.

Our question to you is, what are you doing on the 20th and 21st of April 2018? If you’re a developer, data-scientist or UX/UI designer, why don’t you join us at UnBox for a weekend of fun where we can get to know you and you us!

And let’s take back hackathons and make them about learning experiences, community and fun.

Register here!