My Hackathon-In-A-Box experience
TL:DR —
- What: Ran a free 2-week hackathon for developers new to web3 with support from Covalent in my local city
- How: Covalent provided funding, content and marketing resources while I organized the hackathon logistics.
- Why: Helped me network with like-minded people and also establish my professional presence as a web3 developer
- Takeaway: The Hackathon-in-a-box Alchemist quest supported by Covalent is an amazing way for anyone to learn about and share their web3 knowledge with their local community.
One of the quests available for the Alchemists in the new iteration of The Alchemist Program is the Hackathon-In-a-Box, or HIAB. It entails running your own full hackathon with prizes, workshops, participants, real apps and more. If you’re wondering if you can do it on your own, or if you just want to know my experience, then this blog is for you.
Hi! My name is Maximiliano, I’m part of the Alchemist Program, and I’ll tell you my experience running this quest.
The moment it was announced by Jackie in one of our meetings, I thought “what an amazing opportunity”. Think about this, when will you have the opportunity to host a real hackathon in your city, with all the tools at your disposal, and with a complete guide to do it? The benefits are invaluable, and I’m not talking about any kind of rewards. The contacts, the reputation you can get and the opportunities it may bring to you are endless. That’s what I thought. I live in a city in the northern part of Argentina, where events like hackathons are non-existent, and I’ll be the first one to do something like this, with the backing of Covalent, an amazing blockchain company. I’m not going to miss this opportunity. I had to try it.
After filling the form I got contacted by Leibing, the person in charge of the quest, an awesome person. After receiving the email we did a call to set everything up. He was very open to any suggestion and idea I had, he didn’t want things to go his way, he just wanted to give me a hand on anything I would like to do for the hackathon. Then there’s Harish, another awesome person with a beard like the gods willing to give me a hand too. I want a beard like that.
I already had some ideas of how I’ll run the event. My brother, Pablo, works as an academy manager at a dev school called RollingCode, so I talked to him about the possibility of running a hackathon there. He loved the idea, so we contacted the founders and guess what, they loved the idea too. The reason isn’t a mystery, Covalent will hold the event, give the prizes, run workshops and all, and they will offer the event to their students and teachers. So they’ll be having a huge event for their community for free and I’ll have a lot of people interested in participating. That was the agreement, after that everything went smoothly.
I prepared a document for the hackathon where I established the budget, which included some swag, snacks, a banner, etc and a description of the process of the event. With the help of Leibing I made a form for the descriptions and the Gitcoin site with all the details of the hackathon. The event took place from April 7 to April 29.
This was the chronology:
Initial presentation on April 1st, where I presented the hackathon to the whole RollingCode community. The school helped me with the announcements so it wasn’t a problem to get an audience.
After that presentation, RollingCode served some of the snacks I got from Covalent’s budget and we had a lot of nice talks about blockchain, Web3, working online, etc. And, as you can see, some of them are already using Covalent’s hat.
The hackathon began on April 7th. After all the participants have filled the form and are ready to work, we did the official launch of the event. During the hackathon I did several workshops about Web3, like how to use a wallet, claim the prizes, use of the API, etc. Some of them were online via zoom and some of them were on site.
Most of the participants didn’t even know what Web3 is, or how a blockchain works, but the API is so easy to use that they don’t need to be Web3 native users to understand how it works. Since they were devs, using an API wasn’t a big problem, and for the concepts they might not understand I made a little glossary to help them: topics like “chain ID”, “contract address”, etc.
I enjoyed every moment of the hackathon, seeing the passion they put into the apps they were doing. Their interest in this new technology and the hunger of knowledge they had was fulfilling.
The hackathon ended on April 29, we did a closing ceremony showcasing all the apps, congratulating all those who were brave enough to overcome their fear of failure and present something. The magic of this kind of hackathon is that Covalent isn’t asking for real use websites or apps without any bugs or perfectly made — Covalent wants everyone to learn about Web3, have fun, and have a good time with those with the same passion. That’s what hackathon-in-a-box is all about.
If you ask me if I’m willing to do another hackathon-in-a-box quest, my answer is “oh my god YES”. Is an amazing experience. Don’t be afraid of trying, you’re not going to fail, you are here to learn, to gain new skills, to meet awesome people and have fun. Let us help you. You’re not alone. You’re just one step closer to starting your journey as a hackathon-in-a-box master.
About Covalent
Covalent provides the industry-leading Unified API bringing visibility to billions of Web3 data points. Developers use Covalent to build exciting multi-chain applications like crypto wallets, NFT galleries, and investor dashboard tools utilizing data from 32+ blockchains. Covalent is trusted by a community of 27,000+ developers and powers data for 1000+ applications including 0x, Zerion, Rainbow Wallet, Rotki, Bitski and many others. Hackathon-in-a-box is a community initiative by Covalent to bring Web3 hackathons to different regions in the world. Get mentorship, playbooks, and have the opportunity to connect or work with ecosystem partners.
