Quill: An Open-Source Hackathon Registration System

Jessy Lin
HackMIT Stories
Published in
2 min readMar 31, 2017

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Introducing Quill

Quill is an open source registration system designed especially for hackathons! We’ve been using it successfully since HackMIT 2015, and we’re excited to finally share it with the rest of the hackathon community.

Features

Quill provides a streamlined registration flow for hackathon attendees. We’ve designed it so hackers can:

  1. Submit an application as an individual or team
  2. Be admitted or waitlisted
  3. Confirm their attendance after being accepted and provide more details like t-shirt size, dietary restrictions, etc.

For the hackathon organizer, Quill keeps track of everything you could possibly need. You can view registration stats, admit hackers, and check them in day-of, all within the registration system!

You can get a basic version of registration up and running within minutes, and easily customize the branding + application questions to your event. It’s just as easy to set up as a Typeform or a third-party registration system — but by running your own software, you have much more control and flexibility over your hackers’ data, and hackers have a much better experience.

Future

As hackathon organizers, we understand the stress that goes into planning an event from the ground up. We hope Quill takes care of a large part of that, so you can focus on the other things that make your event great. Please shoot us an email to let us know if it’s helped you!

Most importantly, if there are ways you think Quill could be better, please contribute! The HackMIT team has been developing a lot of open-source software for the community, and we hope that our work will inspire more organizers to pay it forward :)

We’re releasing Quill here. Let us know if you have any questions, comments, or feedback!

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