How to Organize a Successful Hackathon (With a Template)
This past year, we introduced internal hackathons in Scoro. By now, we’ve already had two of them and are planning the third. Organizing such a big event has taught us a lot. In order to encourage everyone to start with internal hackathons, I decided to share the steps we’ve taken to make sure of its success.
The main goal for us with these hackathons has been to:
- Solve a problem or gain an advantage over our competitors.
- Offer people a chance to do something different, learn new technologies, experiment, and break away from the everyday rhythm.
- To offer a glimpse into software engineering to those who don’t work closely with engineers on a daily basis.
- Engage the entire team to come up with fresh ideas for improving our product.
But how does one plan and host such an event in the first place and make sure it will succeed?
1. Come up with a topic 🦄
As a first step, you need to figure out what topic would bring the most value to your company. Be it building something new and innovative or solving an existing problem that you have.
In our first hackathon, we focused on “growth loops”, meaning we tried to think of ways to drive our existing customers to refer their customers to Scoro. The second one was about how Scoro can leverage and innovate with AI.
2. Have a budget 🤑
Hackathons cost money, that’s for certain. Think through the expenses, create a detailed budget, and confirm that budget with relevant people.
For example, for the AI Hackathon in Scoro, our expenses included
- Prizes
- Snacks and Drinks
- Lunch and Dinner
- Cake
- Hackathon T-shirts
- Custom-made hackathon stickers
3. Set the date and announce the hackathon 📅
Agree on a date a few months before the actual hackathon will take place. Put a placeholder into everybody’s calendars, so people can take it into account when planning holidays or scheduling other commitments. This will also ensure that everyone will have enough time to think about the topic and generate ideas.
Next, announce the hackathon. Whether it’s during the company-wide all-hands meeting or in a Slack message. Make sure people are aware that the hackathon is happening, when it’s happening, and what’s the topic.
4. Create an ideas board 💡
Create a board for the hackathon ideas and pitches. Long before the hackathon actually takes place. Ideally, as soon as you announce the hackathon. Advertise it and encourage everyone to take part and pitch their ideas, no matter how crazy.
5. Design hackathon visuals 🎨
Do it yourself or reach out to the designers in your company to come up with some cool designs for the hackathon. You can use those designs on custom T-shirts, stickers, cakes or even add it as a custom emoji to Slack.
People love visual things and having a fun logo or a picture will definitely make the event more unique and attractive to people.
6. Order merch 👕
Once you have the designs, order the merch you have agreed on. Be it T-shirts, stickers, mugs, pens — your imagination (and budget) is the limit.
7. Jury 👩⚖
Usually, the jury consists of VPs and C-level leaders, but not necessarily. Figure out the potential members of your jury and reach out to them to ask if they would be up for it.
The main goal of the jury is to evaluate the pitches and demos based on the evaluation criteria and crown the winner of the hackathon.
8. Mentors 👨🏫
The main responsibility of the mentors is to help the teams nail the idea, scope, and pitch. Their job is to give the teams early feedback and challenge them every step of the way.
I recommend pairing mentors up and having at least one pair for every two to three teams. Pairs because two mentors for a team means double the knowledge, more input, and usually better discussions.
In the end, we had six teams who worked on their ideas, so each pair of mentors was able to work together with two teams and that ratio played out really well.
9. Advisors 🏛
One thing we learned from the first hackathon was the need for advisors— a few individuals with specific skills and/or knowledge to help the teams.
For example, we have had:
- Design advisor — a designer who helps all the teams with their visuals.
- Security advisor — a person who helps to think about how the idea might affect our security or what requirements the team should consider.
- Infra advisor — a person who can help with deployments, creating new test clusters, and making sure the team gets their things done.
10. Promotion plan 🔈
The organizers should make it their main goal to encourage as many people as possible to take part in the hackathon. I recommend coming up with a concrete plan for how you can recruit and attract people to join.
Our promotion plan consisted of:
- Facilitating brainstorming sessions for idea generation to help people come up with ideas for pitching.
- Having a short TED talk type of internal event where we discussed what a hackathon is, who should join hackathons (the answer is everyone, not only developers!), and how to win a hackathon.
- Occasional posts in Slack about tips and tricks, e.g. how to generate hackathon ideas with ChatGPT.
11. Evaluation criteria 💯
To crown the winner of the hackathon, you need something to base your scoring on. The easiest way is to write down your evaluation criteria and make it clear how the ideas will be scored.
This gives the participants a better overview of what is expected of them and their ideas. It also sets some boundaries for the jury when it’s time to score the teams by making sure they focus on the right criteria, not just what idea they personally like the best.
12. Agenda 🗓
To have a successful hackathon, you need an agenda. Make sure your agenda includes all the important events, so people know how to plan their days.
Since we had people from around the world joining, we decided to have the most important sessions — pitching and demos — at a time that would work for everyone.
13. Write down all the important information ℹ️
Use either software meant specifically for hackathons or some internal documentation tool (like Confluence) to write down all the relevant information about the hackathon. Make it easily accessible for everyone at all times.
Note down such things like
- The topic
- Date, time (and location)
- Who can join (the answer is everyone!)
- Team size
- Number of possible pitches
- Prize
- Summary of what is a hackathon
- Mentors, jury, and advisors
- Evaluation criteria
- Agenda
- Pitching guidelines (e.g. how long should it be, what it should cover)
- Guideline for mentors, jury, and advisors
- Any additional information you deem important
14. Prize 🏆
To get people motivated, it’s good to have some kind of a prize. Be it a monetary prize, some cool tech, gift cards, extra vacation days, etc. It’s all up to you.
PS! It’s recommended to give out more prizes than just the first place. The better teams and people are appreciated, the more motivated they are to join the next time around.
15. Organize food and snacks 🍕
Like cars, people also need fuel in order to work and keep driving. To make sure people won’t starve and forget to eat, order some food and drinks. Create a group order or just order a wide variety of food. Make sure to announce it in Slack (or whatever communication tool you’re using) because there’s a high chance that some people will forget to eat while being too focused on hacking.
When people think of hackathons, they often think of energy drinks and junk food, but you can easily switch to some healthier alternatives. For example, sushi or poke bowls.
In addition to lunches and dinners, provide people with snacks. Snickers and Mars bars are always the winners, but you can also get some fruit, muesli bars, etc.
16. Hackathon kick-off and pitches ⚽️
To have a well-organized kick-off event that runs smoothly, make sure to take care of the following:
- Hand out the T-shirts to participants.
- Order and organize food.
- Agree on the order of the pitches.
- Make sure all the technical stuff is set up for recording/remote joining.
- Have your keynote ready to start the hackathon and introduce pitchers and guidelines.
- Introduce how the hacking part will look like and if there are any limitations.
- Explain what to do during the hackathon and when is the next event or deadline people need to be mindful of (e.g. deadline for sending in their actual work).
17. Team formation 👥
After all the ideas have been pitched, it’s time to let the audience choose the ideas they are interested in and form the teams. To avoid confusion around what to do, who to approach, and how the formation works, I recommend thinking it through beforehand and setting up a system that makes team formation easy for everyone.
Some ideas:
- Have the pitchers stand in a fixed place in the room so people can easily find them, come and discuss the topic, and show interest in joining the team.
- Keep some communication channel open for the remote participants (E.g. Slack or Zoom breakout rooms).
- Set up a Miro board that can be displayed on the big screen at all times with the team names and interested people.
18. The hacking part 👩💻
Once the “hacking” starts, there is not much for you as an organizer to do. You can make sure that while people are working hard, they have enough snacks and drinks. And when they have questions, be there for them. In addition, try to keep the teams up to date on all the relevant information (e.g. when is the deadline to send in their work or when the lunch arrives), because people might get caught up in their work and forget to check the agenda.
For keeping all the information flowing we opted for a public Slack channel. It was the place where we announced when the food arrived, the next events took place, deadlines were approaching and many teams also used this to share general information and ask questions.
19. Demo 📺
An hour or so before the demo event starts, make sure people will send you or the jury access to their ideas and “hacks”. This will give the jury the possibility to check what was built before the demos take place (if the time allows).
Before the demo, remind people about the evaluation criteria and introduce the teams. Then, get started with the demos.
After the demos have been held, make sure the jury has enough time to start their evaluation and decide on the winner. Definitely leave some buffer time for Q&A. For example, we provided the jury 50 minutes to decide in a closed meeting room while all the participants got to enjoy some cheeseburgers accompanied by drinks.
20. Announcing the winner 🥇
Once the jury has decided on the winner and runner-ups, gather everyone together to announce the winner. You might decide to give feedback to all the teams and/or also show the final scoreboard on the screen to be more transparent about how the teams were scored and who landed in what place.
To end the long hackathon on a high note, bring out the cake, and don’t forget to thank every single person who took part in the hackathon.
You might consider having a party later in the evening to celebrate the success of the hackathon or just send everyone home to sleep and recharge their batteries.
PS! Don’t forget to take lots of pictures!
21. Ask help ✨
It’s okay if you want to do everything by yourself, but know your limit. Most people are always happy to help, so don’t be afraid to ask for it.
Spreadsheet template 📝
I’ve created a template in Google Spreadsheets to help you succeed in your hackathon organization. Feel free to duplicate it and modify it to your needs.
It includes sheets for:
- General to-do list to make sure nothing slips your mind
- Tracker for jury, mentors, and advisors
- Detailed to-do list for the hackathon week
- Budget tracker
- T-shirts order tracker
- Evaluation criteria
- Feedback
That is the main list of things to consider when organizing an internal hackathon for your company. If you have anything to add or a question, then drop me a comment below.
Good luck organizing your next hackathon!
If you’re passionate about working with exciting technologies and want to help us implement them, check out our open positions at https://www.scoro.com/careers/.
