What Made Hack the North Great
Observations from an Outsider
About a thousand hackers convened at the University of Waterloo this past weekend for Hack the North. It was a first-time event, which meant that we were expecting the typical novice problems — poor wifi, lack of food and water, inability to stick to schedule, et cetera. However, the new organizers didn’t just handle those things beautifully. They managed to surprise us with a great experience that went above and beyond what we could have anticipated.
I’m a veteran hackathoner — I’ve been to a lot of hackathons and run/planned some of my own. I won’t say that Hack the North was the best hackathon I’ve ever been to. (I’m forever loyal to my own PennApps.) Something about it felt special to me, though. Hackers left with a really deep optimism for our community that felt more intense than the average hackathon. The organizers focused on what was most important to hackers, and executed those things particularly well, while providing us with a truly fun experience. I’m writing this post less as a pat on the back for the HTN team (though the deserve one), but more to inform my team and other organizers about what they can improve upon.
Below are some of the really great aspects of this hackathon. A quick disclaimer: This is by no means a balanced overview of the event. There were negative aspects, but I don’t feel like a public post is the place for those thoughts. The positives are more interesting and more constructive, so let’s take a look at what made it awesome:
- The Prize Surprise: Perhaps the coolest aspect of this event was the way prizes were handled. There were plenty of announcements and postings about sponsor prizes, but the top prizes were never mentioned and, according to one of the organizers, nobody asked about them until just before the closing ceremony. That fact is pretty incredible if you really think about it — if a hackathon is really a competition, shouldn’t the top prize be what everyone cares about? Other hackathons heavily market their prizes in event advertisements as incentive for participants. However, nearly a thousand people, including several hundred non-Canadians, spent an entire weekend intensely working in an engineering building at Waterloo without knowing or caring what tangible thing they were working for. The point was to prove that prizes are really just an afterthought to hackers, who actually just love hacking. The surprise was that there wasn’t even a top prize — all members of the top ten teams got their pick of awesome hardware like Oculus and Myo.
- The Demos: The final demos themselves weren’t just noteworthy — they were completely out of this world. The quality of the top ten surpassed what I’ve seen at any other hackathon. Every team that stepped on stage somehow seemed more impressive and mind-boggling than the last. Although prizes clearly aren’t that important to hackers, having really awesome demos still is. Impressive and inspiring demos leave an impact on those who really understand them, and there’s nothing cooler than leaving an event feeling like you’ve just had a glimpse into the future.
- The Big Three: Hackathon organizers commonly cite three logistical challenges they must overcome to have a successful event — space, wifi, and power. HTN did an outstanding job with all three. All thousand people had access to power and wifi all weekend (which is surprising, given that almost every hackathon has at least one major wifi outage during the weekend). The hacking venue, called E5, was sleek and modern. It somehow felt badass just to be working there.
- Fun, Fun, Fun, Fun: There were several events planned for the weekend that were just downright fun. The organizers appealed to our inner children with a 22-foot inflatable slide, jousting on an inflatable, and constant cotton candy and popcorn. We’re all people who like spending entire weekends just tinkering with things — we’re children at heart, so appealing to that side of hackers goes really far.
- Hardware: Along that vein, there was a ton of cool hardware to play with. Having awesome hardware isn’t just a decent way to appeal to already-attending hackers — good hardware hacks tend to have great demos, and hardware hacking involves a different skill set that can get new people involved in hackathons.
- Big Names: The marketing efforts were loaded with big names, such as Y Combinator president Sam Altman and the founders of several hacker-relevant startups like Pebble and Myo. It was really cool to hear from the people that matter most to hackers (i.e. the people most of us hope to be in five or ten years), and it was even better that they were the ones judging projects on Sunday morning.
- A Truly Canadian Hackathon: Part of the fun of hackathons is the traveling involved. It’s a chance to experience a new place at no or minimal cost. However, we normally spend our time at hackathons locked up in an isolated building, staring at our screens, so we never actually learn about the place we traveled to see. HTN did a great job of showing off Waterloo and Canada to the hundreds of people who ventured there to see it. Most snacks were characteristic of Canada, like Tim Horton’s, Smarties, and poutine. Waterloo administrators moderated discussions on stage. Ceremonies rang with chants of “Water, Water Water!” “Loo, Loo, Loo!” (Confession time: we spent a decent part of our bus ride back to the States enthusiastically shouting the Waterloo refrain.)
- The Volunteers: There seemed to be tons of volunteers around pretty much whenever they were needed. Having excess volunteers is really useful for throwing a massive hackathon. It takes a lot of pressure off of the organizers to do smaller tasks and frees them up to direct and problem-solve. They had so many that they could effectively throw volunteers at their problems (which included having volunteers act as lawn signs and line the walk between E5 and the auditorium).
- The Organizers: There was an insanely passionate team of organizers running around all weekend to make the event a success. Most of the team stayed up and ran around pretty much the entire weekend. Several of the organizers are avid hackathoners, and their love of these events really shone through. Their experience gave them the perspective to know what was most crucial to participants leaving a hackathon happy, thus they were able to focus on and improve those things. All I can say to the team is job well done, and please get some sleep.
