How to Organize a Hackathon
I was fortunate enough to have hosted my first hackathon, Implement AI, along with the executive team of the McGill AI Society. Hosting a hackathon can be extremely stressful — especially if it’s your first one. So I’d like to share with you some of the notes I’ve taken down, and the lessons I’ve learned from organizing ImplementAI.
Set your goals
A hackathon usually gathers a large amount of computer programmers and enthusiasts who collaboratively create, innovate, and solve problems. As a hackathon organizer, we should always keep in mind what our mandates are. Generally speaking, we should always provide learning experiences and opportunities for our participants while strengthening bonds between hackers and mentors. At ImplementAI, our goals were:
- To provide an opportunity for university students to explore the world of AI — as students ourselves, we want to build a community where we can all learn more about AI together.
- To allow participants to learn something new alongside with mentors.
- To strengthen the community of AI by connecting students, AI industry and researchers.
Inclusivity and Diversity
As in most STEM fields, hackathons usually lack diversity. Whether it’s ensuring that everyone’s dietary needs are met, providing beginners with extra guidance, or having gender neutral bathrooms that are equipped with feminine hygiene products, we want to cultivate a supportive and welcoming atmosphere where everyone is celebrated and empowered to do their best.
Venue and Date
Start early! This is the best advice I can give to successfully secure the venue that suits your hackathon. Try to select days where most of your targeted audience are likely to be free by planning dates that do not conflict with holidays, or the weekend before a COMP 551 midterm. The venue of a hackathon should be equipped with the following:
- A large space as the main hacking area.
- Enough tables and proper seating so that participants can be comfortably seated.
- A separate space for workshops and meal serving.
- Space for sponsors to hold their booths.
- Space for participants to relax and sleep (especially important for longer hackathons).
- Enough power outlets and/or cord extensions to accommodate for all participants.
- Fast and reliable WIFI.
- Projectors, microphones, sound systems.
Professional venues can charge quite a bit, ranging from 1500$ — 6000$ per day. It is essential to find a venue that fits your budget and set the right vibe for your hackathon. Know your budget, and negotiate with the venue provider accordingly. Universities usually offer their event space at a lower price.
It is also a good idea to contact local companies to see if you can use their office space — they may even offer a venue sponsorship to help offset venue costs! However, do bear in mind that some venues may require your organization’s proof of insurance and/or security for overnight events like a hackathon. It all goes back to planning ahead to ensure that all of these requirements are considered.
Secure Sponsorships
The success of a hackathon is inseparable from the generous support of sponsors. It is essential to find companies that are good matches for your hackathon’s objectives, and who are willing to offer sponsorship. Start by reaching out to big companies like Google, Microsoft, and local startups, which are also great options. Contacting a university recruiter is a great way to initiate conversation with big companies.
Generally, sponsors provide more than just financial support. They serve as mentors and judges during the hackathon to answer participants’ questions. By sponsoring a hackathon, companies can gain brand exposure while engaging with highly impactful participants through tech talks, workshops, or in some cases, providing access to their APIs, technology, products, and/or GPUs for the duration of the hackathon. At ImplementAI, Microsoft provided access to Azure; almost all groups ended up using it, and learned more about their cloud services. Furthermore, companies can help to foster an environment for passionate, motivated young leaders. Therefore, the contribution of sponsors can definitely enrich your hackathon by having workshops and mentorships.
Know your participants
It is a good idea to send out a survey to your hackers to find out what they are expecting from their hackathon experience — in terms of both their technical and career goals and the kinds of accommodations they might need for the duration of the hackathon. Some general questions can be:
- How did you hear about this hackathon?
- What do you expect the most from mentors, companies or researchers?
- What tools could help you to be more efficient?
- What kind of food do you prefer?
- What kind of prizes would motivate you?
These questions allow the organizers to target different audiences through different mediums, and to tailor content to respective demographics. It also helps organizers to gain a deeper understanding of their participants, and to satisfy their needs with the resources available. Moreover, most hackathons host workshops — knowing what companies and mentors can offer can help to fine tune your hackathon schedule.
Food and Drinks
Serving good food is essential for a successful hackathon! In addition to catering to the dietary needs for over 100 people, hackers will be coding in the same space for 24 hours (or longer), and will therefore need nutritious food, snacks, and drinks to get them through. For example, fruits, vegetables and energy bars are good options. In the same vein, caffeine and water are crucial, and make up the fundamental layer of the unofficial hackathon food pyramid. Make sure you have enough coffee, tea, and water for the entire duration of the hackathon.
Food can cost a lot — even more than the venue. Though pizzas are probably the least expensive, try to get more diverse and healthier food options. You can base your catering orders on the survey responses. Though the price of your order depends on your agreement with your caterer, you can expect the cost to come down to 9$ — 15$ dollars per person per meal.
From my experience, it is hard to get food/coffee sponsorship, but it never hurts to contact caterers if you think they are potentially interested in reaching out to their targeted customers through your event. Remember to place your catering order one to two weeks prior to your event.
Registration and Communication
After the selection process, make sure to send emails out to three groups of applicants; those who are selected, waitlisted, and refused. Ask applicants to confirm their attendance; however, life happens, and not all confirmed participants will show up to the event. You can expect attendance to be lower if your event is near exam season. To make up for this, it helps to extend acceptances by as much as 50% more than the maximum capacity of the venue. Similarly, to ensure that we don’t go over capacity, we can offer a standby, first-come-first serve option for people on the waitlist.
About three to five days before the event, set up a Slack channel for participants and sponsors to connect with one another. This is a great platform for participants to form teams and for sponsors to advertise their workshops prior to the hackathon. In addition, it helps to send a reminder to attendees three days before the hackathon about event logistics::
- Location of the event with a map, or a link to one
- Hackathon schedule
- Reminders for student IDs, laptops, chargers, water bottles, sleeping bags, and personal hygiene products.
- A Slack channel invite
Similarly, send a logistics email to sponsors five days prior to the event, including the following:
- Location of the event with a map, or a link to one
- Hackathon schedule and arrival time (sponsors should arrive earlier than participants for set up).
- Logistics about workshops and opening/closing ceremonies
- A Slack channel invite
- Confirmation of judge names and emails to set up your Devpost before the hackathon. Devpost is a great platform to showcase software projects and to connect with your fellow hackers. We usually use Devpost as the judging platform at a hackathon.
- Thanking the sponsors for their continued support.
Team Formation
Not all hackers will show up with a pre-formed team! Thus, it is important to allocate a period of time for team formation before hacking starts. An alternative solution would be to also create a team formation channel on the Slack group. Although teamwork is strongly encouraged, some hackers might just end up working on their own, and that’s cool too!
Prizes
Prizes, while important, should never be one’s sole legitimate reason to participate in a hackathon. Be sure to look for the ‘bang for your buck’ when selecting prizes for the winning hacks! At the end of the day, hackathons are all about having fun. At ImplementAI, we decided to reward some light hearted humor with a “Best AI Meme Prize,” along with spicy ramen packets for the winners of the 3am spicy ramen challenge.
The Day of the Hackathon
Finally, after months of planning, it is the big day! You are excited and exhausted, but here are some final logistics to handle.
- Arrive early and make sure everything is properly set up
- Post signs to help attendees find the direction to the event space
- Post the Devpost link at the very beginning of the hackathon
- Bring swag and printed hackathon programs to hand out to participants and sponsors
- Make sure to have a photographer for the duration of the hackathon
- Have someone at the help desk to answer participants technical and logistical questions
- Have someone managing meal set up and clean up
- Make sure bathrooms and showers are clean
- Have someone managing workshops
Judging criteria
Inclusivity and diversity can be reflected through judging criteria and diversity among the judging panel. Technicality, while important, should not be the sole focus of the judging criteria, which should also reward other aspects like originality and social good. For example, the judging criteria of Implement AI were the following:
- Relevance to Artificial Intelligence
- Technicality (i.e. the completeness and functionality of the final project)
- Originality
- Project presentation
- User experience
- Social good
Post-hackathon
Hacking is over; you’ve seen what everyone’s managed to put together within 24 hours, and they’re impressive, to say the least. While everyone leaves with their free swag and a lot of freshly acquired knowledge, you finally have time to take a breath, for all your hard work in putting this hackathon together has paid off.
However, it is good practice to put a few finishing touches after the hackathon:
- Send out feedback forms for participants to fill
- Send out thank-you emails to sponsors and hopefully secure sponsorship for future events
- Write a post event report
- Finalise hackathon expenses
- Write a blog about the event
I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you found it useful, please clap and share! Have fun and good luck organizing your hackathon!
