How to host a hackathon

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Today is about a different kind of HHH: How to Host a Hackathon.

Pre-Event Setup

  • Clear submission template - Participants should know exactly what to deliver. Make it so clear that they can spend 90% of their time building, not figuring out requirements
  • Starter materials - Provide boilerplate code/resources that work with minimal setup. Ideal: participants can clone a repo and have a working submission1 in <10 minutes
  • Team matching by ideas, not backgrounds - Have participants brainstorm beforehand and form teams around shared project interests, not based on their CV

Timing & Structure

  • Weekend-only format works best (2-3 days). Longer events paradoxically get worse submissions since the total amount of hours spent on a 3 month hackathon will be lower
  • Don’t go shorter than 2 days - Original projects need incubation time. Many winning teams have nothing functional until Sunday morning!

During the Event

  • Fuel the marathon - Stock protein bars, fresh fruit, caffeine. Consider providing meals to keep momentum. In the literature, meals are often a number 1 or 2 reason for joining a hackathon so it’s well worth it
  • Create dedicated communication channels - Slack/Discord for quick questions and meme-sharing
  • Encourage ambition - Rested minds produce better code but a hackathon is a chance to produce a piece of work for life

Judging & Outcomes

  • Crystal-clear criteria - E.g., “1) Problem advancement 2) Real-world impact 3) Code quality/reproducibility”
  • Early resource availability - Share all materials, ideas, and templates well before the event starts

Key Insight: The magic happens in constrained timeboxes. Teams often produce surprisingly sophisticated projects in 48-72 hours when given clear goals and good infrastructure.

Q&A

Let’s go through three hackathon types: A research hackathon, a product hackathon, and a challenge hackathon.

Q: How to assign teams?

  • Research: Let participants organize around ideas, not people, through brainstorming sessions and an idea board
  • Product: Get participants together based on their technical / business backgrounds in the topics of interest to the hackathon
  • Challenge: Match participants based on their skill level and seniority, which can be automatically scraped from LinkedIn

Q: How to collect submissions and what should they include?

  • Research: Form with PDF template submission
  • Product: Form with a demonstration video recording
  • Challenge: Form with a link to a Github repository / results on the benchmark / project report / etc.
  • Let chatbots evaluate whether a project fulfills the requirements for a submission
  • Have a hard deadline with a countdown timer to avoid unfair evaluations and build urgency[¨2]

Q: What sort of vibe should I build for the hackathon?

  • In all types of hackathons, you want to build a vibe of Confident Optimism and hacker vibes; only constructive criticism, wrapped in a sandwich of positivity and excitement
  • Copious amounts of emoji use is encourage, including every cringe emoji you can find on your keyboard
  • Keep people updated about what’s going to happen next and don’t spam everyone - every message is the chance for an announcement, so make them count!
  • Make sure to give people the chance to ask questions live, either by text or by call, since you will never anticipate what questions will come up. Make sure to include the answers to key questions in your announcements as well

Read more about my opinions on hosting hackathons

  1. Yes; a complete working submission! They will never submit this because it’s the template but it immediately shows them what the final output can look like and what they can build upon. ↩

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