Embracing the Hacker Community at Hackcon VII
Key takeaways from attending MLH’s hackathon organizer’s conference
On August 23–25, 2019, 12 members from nwPlus flew to Pennsylvania to attend the annual hackathon organizer’s conference hosted by Major League Hacking: Hackcon VII. Almost 500 hackathon organizers from around the world gathered at Poconos Spring Camp to share their passion towards the hacker community and discuss strategies to make it better.
nwPlus takes on Hackcon VII. ✨
Hackcon is a weekend jam-packed with workshops, discussions, and lightning talks made for hackathon organizers, by hackathon organizers. It gives new organizers a guide to learn about the complexities of running a hackathon, and veteran organizers a stadium to relay the lessons they learned along the way. In this article I’ll go over the key takeaways I learned from attending my second Hackcon.
Don’t be afraid to share what you’re passionate about.
This year, I had the honour of delivering a lightning talk on documentation practices used at nwPlus. To be completely honest, I have never spoken at an event before and the idea of an international conference being my first was terrifying. It is also a well-known joke among developers that they hate documentation, and I was worried that my talk would be boring in comparison with all of the “exciting” topics such as team building and diversity.
After my lightning talk and for the days after the event, fellow organizers came up to me to tell me how much they liked my talk. Connection requests and kind messages flooded my LinkedIn and Facebook for days after the weekend. I also learned that
from PickHacks came across my Medium article on Documentation last year, which inspired him to migrate his team onto the documentation platform Notion.
MLH offers great support and even encourages first time speakers. Their deadlines ensured that I received plenty of feedback and practically memorized my talk by the time Hackcon came around. If you’re a hackathon organizer reading this article — go for it! Literally no one will judge you, and chances are that your “boring” ideas might be super valuable to another team!
Entering the main conference venue, we were greeted with a gigantic poster of our Outgoing UBC Local Hack Day Co-Director
. She founded UBC’s Local Hack Day (formerly UBC Hacks) with in 2016, and MLH’s CEO Mike Swift shared her story during his keynote. He talked about how Charmaine and Kristen started UBC Hacks to be an inclusive and beginner friendly environment for hackers, and joining forces with nwPlus last year allowed them to continue making an impact year-round. This was proven to be true when we were named North America’s Largest Local Hack Day in 2018.The hacker community is rapidly growing and not stopping anytime soon.
Aside from featuring many amazing members of the organizer community, Swift’s Keynote showcased lots of amazing stats of how hackathons have evolved over the years. This year, there are 3000+ organizers worldwide — almost the same amount of hackers in MLH’s first season 7 years ago. Between 2018 and 2019, we grew from 71,000 to 90,000+ hackers attending MLH hackathons worldwide, and it is only going uphill from here as MLH is expanding to the Asia-Pacific this year.
Likewise, the numbers in our hackathons AND the number of events at nwPlus have exploded over the past few years. In 2018-2019, nwPlus expanded its umbrella to welcome Local Hack Day, a beginner friendly 12-hour hackathon, and cmd-f, Vancouver’s first all-female* hackathon, to the roster alongside our flagship event nwHacks.
This year, we are nearly tripling the number of events and launching a Campus Ambassador Program to make a greater impact in building a more inclusive and supportive hacker community. Read more about our new additions in our Medium article previewing our 2019/2020 nwPlus season. 🎉
Scaling up comes with a new set of challenges.
Aside from my lightning talk, two of our outgoing directors from 2018–2019,
and Lauren Tonello also flew in to direct workshops on Inclusivity and Marketing, respectively. This is the first year we had not one, but three nwPlus members deliver talks at Hackcon vii.In the talks delivered by our nwPlus members, we respond to how we are dealing with the challenges of a growing hacker community.
Building a marketing strategy
As the number of hackathons around us are increasing, Lauren discusses in her workshop how she utilized a marketing strategy to increase our social media presence and set our hackathons apart for sponsors. Showcasing how we are an integral pillar of the Vancouver tech scene dedicated to running fun and enriching events helped us double our applicant numbers for nwHacks and win the title of largest Local Hack Day in North America in 2018.
Hackathon.includes(everyone)
As the hacker community grows, we want to engage more participants from diverse and non-technical backgrounds as this offers new perspectives and skills to improve the hacks created at our events. In Charmaine’s workshop, she discussed approaches to achieve this such as hosting hackathons directed towards minority demographics, lowering the barrier of entry, having diverse representation in judges and speakers, and providing travel reimbursements to people who don’t live in the vicinity of the hackathon.
Documentation doesn’t stop at development
In my lightning talk, I credit documentation to be the reason why we were able to rebrand (previously from StartupStorm) and expand to three hackathons in the span of one year. We document everything from task boards and meeting minutes to slack announcements. This documentation keeps everyone on the same page, improves transparency and efficiency, and serves as a guide to building future hackathons.
The nwPlus family is lot of fun 😎
Aside from being a place for attendees to share their ideas and discussion, the location at Poconos Springs Camp allowed us to relive our childhood and do all sorts of fun camp activites like rowing canoes, making crafts, and toasting s’mores by the campfire.
However, unlike kids camps, we could stay up all night to chat with other organizers, often sleeping at 4AM only to wake up at 8AM the next day for breakfast and morning talks — Think of it as a hackathon for hackathon organizers!
Hackcon-related banter aside, one of my favourite parts of the trip was simply travelling through New York as a group of friends. We roamed Manhattan, watched broadway shows, took insta-worthy pics, and ate all of the food. We also held an nwPlus (formerly StartupStorm) reunion dinner and met with alumni who started their nwPlus journey as far back as 2016.
Being a hackathon organizer means that you’re great at sleeping anywhere, and we put that to the test when we camped out in terminal B of LaGuardia Airport to save on Airbnb costs (just university student things…) and caught our 6AM flight home. 😴
Still need proof that we had fun at Hackcon? Check out our fun times and shenanigans in my travel video:
Words by Anita Tse, nwPlus Co-President
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