Almost 3 weeks ago we announced the launch of Hacker Office Hours, to learn what we can do to have the best possible event for our most loyal fans. The feedback we (Kevin, Nevin and Yazad) have received so far has been tremendous! We wanted to highlight two of the stories we’ve heard: improving the experience of new hackers and volunteers.
Hackers
Our first Office Hour session was with Ronit (founder of NHacks) who was also lucky enough to have MHacks be his first hackathon experience. He recalled a time when a friendly hacker from Waterloo took him under his wing to build a 3D Printer with pancake batter. He wanted to spread this experience to high schoolers across Michigan and nationwide. The fact that a new hacker can come to our event, leave with a successful hack and go on to start their own hackathon speak volumes about how welcoming our community is.
We know coming to your first hackathon can be overwhelming! Ronit felt the same way when he saw hackers slowly take over the entire venue. It can be hard to know where to start when there’s a million things happening at once. That’s why we love Ronit’s idea of a newbie hacker guide! For MHacks X, we’ll be sure there’s a guide for new hackers so they can get the most out of their first hackathon experience! Furthermore, our guides won’t just get them used to the chaos of a hackathon, there will be projects and tutorials available for new hackers so they can jump right into the action! Over the next few weeks we’ll also be focusing on increasing workshops and mentorship for new hackers, so stay tuned!
Volunteers
Another hacker office hour session we wanted to highlight was one that wasn’t with a hacker, but rather, with a volunteer and past organizer. While these sessions were originally for hackers, we thought her insights were particularly important so we wanted to highlight them here as well. She talked to us about how we could improve the volunteer experience. As a result, we’ll be using her suggestions to improve event communication with volunteers and ensure that ALL volunteers are up to date with their information and are just as excited about the event as the core team! We believe that having better volunteers = a better experience for hackers!
While we only highlighted two conversations, we’ve learned so much more from all the people we talked to. We’re always happy to talk to anyone who wants to tell us their story or how we can help you get the most out of MHacks. Feel free to drop us a line at hackathon@umich.edu or on Facebook!
Cheers!
- Kevin, Yazad, and Nevin
Want more MHacks goodness? Check out our last post: Dev Blog: How We Chose Our Stack
Questions? Comments? Concerns? Compliments (we like these!)? Shoot us an email (hackathon@umich.edu), message us on Facebook, DM us on Twitter, or tag us on Instagram!
