What happens at your hackathon shouldn’t stay at your hackathon
How to extend your hackathon’s influence.
Changing the lives of the n hackers that attended your phenomenal hackathon last week is great, but why stop there?
You worked for maybe 6 months to create an amazing experience and priceless content— here’s how to make it last and spread it to 8n people.
Note: These are things MHacks either did, ‘shoulda/coulda/woulda’ done, or only I thought of 3 minutes ago. They range from the obvious, but incredibly important, to the smaller things that are underrated and could deliver huge results.
Warning: My talk is cheap. All are easier said than done.
Hire multiple photographers
A picture speaks a thousand words, which is why many hackathons hire a photographer to cover their event. However, from looking at event pictures from several hackathons, the photos usually only cover opening, 1–2 tech talks, closing, and expo.
The real magic happens in-between, when people are hacking
Hiring one photographer will cover a few sections of your massive event, but will naturally miss others. Hire a few companies, send volunteers out with their smartphones— cover the magic of the room when someone makes a breakthrough, or when 20 people crowd around one laptop. Capture the emotion on the face you can’t see when someone is in another world with Oculus Rift.
MHacks had one photo team led by the U-M College of Engineering, and another led by MLH. Both of them captured different elements of MHacks, and helped us immortalize what happened September 5–7. Kudos to them.
And use Hashtack. If you’ve got 1,100 hackers like MHacks, chances are they’re gonna be taking some awesome pics too. Get them to use #yourevent, and let Hashtack do the rest of the work to curate the best photos for you.
Record the Talks. All of them.
You helped pull together some of the brightest minds for your Founders Panel or your Technology in the Developing World talk. These talks make huge impacts on people, and sometimes they only realize it after your event. They’ll want to see the talk again, and share it with their friends. Make it famous like a TED-talk. Record it.
Grace Choi hacked a printer to produce makeup @ MHacks. It blew people away— everyone should see it. And they can. Special thanks to MLH for this one.
Recording talks triples your hackathon’s impact, and makes digestible 10–30 minute segments of a 36 hour event for people around the world. This might be their first exposure to your event. It certainly won’t be their last.
Saving talks also gives you evidence of how well the hackathon went. You can use segments and quotes to show your University that you’re worth keeping around.
John Maeda’s closing ceremonies, where he said “Engineering is the Liberal Arts of the 21st Century.”(5:50) The University of Michigan College of Engineering appreciated this, to say the least.
Record the Hackers, Not Just the Hacks
Sure, awesome stuff was made at your hackathon, but awesome people were cultivated as well. They also learned a TON. Discover their stories and share them! This transforms your hackathon’s output from a list of cool hacks Product-Hunt-style to some awesome narratives that demonstrate who the hacker is, where they came from, and why they built what they built.
Which do you think hackers are more likely to share on Facebook? Everyone loves being a special feature.
MLH did an awesome job with this at MHacks going around the expo and interviewing people. Everyone should be and is so proud of what they built. Help them take that to the next level.
PennApps Fall 2013 did a great job of this, and check out the blog posts about MHacks from the hacker perspective in the MHacks IV Collection here on Medium.
Plan your Media Surge Before the Hackathon
TechCrunch. Engadget. The Verge. The New York Times. Your School Paper. Reddit.
You want everyone to know about the magic that happened during your hackathon, and show off some of the most game-changing hacks.
It’s easy to say you’ll deal with this after the event, but you’ll be exhausted. Get someone on the team to sleep well during the hackathon, and hit the ground running right afterwards. Social media and press after the event is just as important as before (if not more). All of these sites take ‘tips’ so create those and submit it within 24 hours of the event. Submit it with the story of the hackers who built it in 36 hours, because human faces behind these hacks make it all the more epic.
Timing is critical. There will be another awesome hackathon next week, and currency is key for a blog like Engadget that has completely different content every 12 hours.
MHacks was too exhausted to pull this off, although we were able to help out Cosmos Browser in getting some considerable press.
Update the Website
Sounds easy, right? It is. But people don’t do it. MHacks hasn’t done it. Oops.
Stop the talk about the registration for the event that already happened, and show off what what was built. Connect to your blog, or your ChallengePost. We had a huge spike in traffic post-MHacks, and gave our visitors nothing to look at.
There are countless other things you can do to make your hackathon’s impact eternal. Got your own tips? Write a response! Or recommend to share it to the rest of your network.
