7 Things To Keep in Mind When Organizing a Virtual Hackathon
ETHTurin Organizers share insights that helped put together a successful hackathon amidst the COVID-19 lockdown.
“Constraints trigger pragmatic creativity and define the selected networks you can trust.”
SOME BACKGROUND FIRST
In December 2019 we were half way through the organization of ETHTurin, the first Italian hackathon of the Ethereum Community and the first on a global scale to have a clear focus on local impact and SDG (Sustainable Development Goals). The COVID-19 pandemic wave hit us: like many, we lost most of our sponsors and faced an internal dilemma of continuing or cancelling. In the end — we told ourselves — what better occasion to hold a Local Impact Blockchain Hackathon and re-think the economy, than a Quarantine?
On April 27, 2020 we successfully brought to end our three-day hackathon, with 80+ hacking participants, a 2-day virtual conference held on Interspace.chat, featuring many exceptional contributions and international panels, 9 submitted projects (1 in Main Net, 8 in TestNet), a total prize pool of EUR 4k+, and the first on-chain implementation of Quadratic Voting via NFT access, built by our partners at Deora.Earth.
In landing this event, we came across some important aspects that we would like to share with the whole community, and people out there looking to organize a similar event.
YOUR VIRTUAL CHECKLIST
- Bootleg quality_ Remember that some of the best music albums out there were recorded in a week, on a 4-track cassette player, during studio closing times. If your means don’t allow you to top the bill, make sure you’re putting out the best convincing and performative MVP possible. There are plenty of tools out there for every purpose. Select the right ones after having tested them properly, list them together on a document and play different flow arrangements. But remember that over-structuring and giving in too much to too many sub-projects within the same hackathon, could distract your attention and energies from the skeleton of your event. FOCUSING on a few key deliverables and tools is essential for the success.
- Define the scope_ There can be two interconnected variables ruling the odds at a hackathon: the average skill level of participants and the “twist” or “focus” of the hackathon itself (agnostic, impact, SDGs or specific industry). Someone could say that the lower the average technical level, the more specific should be the “focus” set for the projects. For example, not just a “Music” hackathon, but rather a “Revenues in live streams for music creators”. As a general rule, we feel to advise hackathon organizers to gather as much data as possible beforehand and set a clear scope for the hackathon. This way, you would not only empower interoperability within the corpus of delivered projects and hacks, but also stand out in a determined industry segment and improve your chances to onboard sponsors.
- Draw Flow Charts _ a hackathon makes no exception in terms of UX. Design the structure of your hackathon, the online tools you will need, by following your attendee persona journey. Keep the communication clear, brief and linear about the on-boarding process, make sure you recruit amongst the speakers valuable endorsers/influencers that can amplify the message and become reference points for attendees. Build the skeleton of the basic experience (depending on what the hackathon’s delivery and content should be) and identify the best tools for it. ETHTurin adopted Mintbase.io for NFT ticketing (free), interspace.chat + jitsi.org for conferencing and Discord for hacking.
- Recruit Video Testimonials _ work your network out and find someone popular, a politician, an influencer, an innovator or someone willing to put the face for a good cause. Writing yourself the speech’ canvas could help them deliver the video contribution in the shortest time possible. This support will grant your event a wider aura, attract media partners and potential sponsors.
- Gather Patronages_ Patronages don’t cost anything and can be granted by local public administrations, universities, institutes, foundations and local boards. The function of Patronages is to guarantee your event’s reliability. Be careful though: once a patronage is obtained, the stake gets higher, and you should do your best to put together a consistent narrative all through the conference and hackathon days.
- Ticketing and Voting_ Ticketing via NFT has acquired a new value since ETHTurin. The Hackathon was the first one to feature an on-chain quadratic voting faucet (built by deora.earth for ETHTurin) that allowed only ETU holders to vote. Using this feature, the whole hackathon community of attendees and speakers could vote equally on all the concurring projects, leaving no space for doubts on the legitimacy of winners. The system has still potential of improvement that can be covered with a manual check of the token holders and email addresses provided upon registration. If you are running a virtual hackathon without NFT tickets, Quadratic Voting can be still safely accessed via this online app (https://qv.geek.sg/).
- Prize Sponsors_ Gathering sponsors ones can be extremely difficult, even more if a global pandemic suddenly has just shut down the world’s global production for the next 3 months. Looking for grants and help from your reference community (Ethereum in our case) is fundamental, looking for private patrons might also reveal to be necessary. Sponsors are a delicate subject, that is why it is always good practice to have a locking agreement with an initial deposit at least two to three months ahead of the event. Despite all possible legal frameworks, a situation of force majeure can still give a good reason to sponsors for a legit leave. In this case, a good way to negotiate with leaving sponsors can be transforming their sponsorship in prizes for the hackathon and asking them to provide tracks of development, thus engaging them on a higher level.
If you plan to organize a virtual hackathon, contact us at hello@ethturin.com. We’ll be happy to help!
Written by Matteo Tambussi, edited by Fanny Lakoubay
