Running a Hackathon
From Opendataday
Hope to add links and best practices about running a hackathon here. If you have thoughts, please add them.
Feeling like some wiki gardening? Please organize my "How Ottawa did it" section into the rest of this page. See if you can also mix in what Oxford's page is like. Those guys have the right idea. - @edwardog/@opendataottawa
Contents |
Practical Things
Before the Hackathon
First, find a venue. You will need to arrange:
- a place to meet that has available: wifi, chairs, tables, power, toilets
- an organising team (it's *hard* to organise a hackathon on your own)
Then start telling people about the hackathon.
- Make a place that you can point publicity at: a wikipage is good for this
- Email, tweet, phone people up, and do this regularly: one email won't be enough to get people excited
- Start a sign-up form. You can do this with a googledoc, or if you're planning something big, an EventBrite page will give you more control over things like emailing everyone who's signed up.
- Get onto events lists: meetup is a good start
- Get local publicity too - local radio, tv, websites etc
And start getting people thinking about what they could do on the day
- Collect people's ideas about what they'd like to do, and find out what they'd need to help them (experts? resources? specific skills?)
- Collect topic-specific information, for instance datasets that could be useful, and links to existing sites that might help participants
- Find local experts who could help before or on the day
Get the practical things sorted early:
- Sponsorship for drinks/ food/ badges etc
- Where to obtain drinks/food for the participants
Plan the day
- When are you going to start and end the day?
- How will you get people started - with a short talk? With a lego exercise?
- When will lunch arrive?
- How and when will you wrap up the day?
Then do the final touches just before the day
- Do a final check on the venue layout - what's going to go where
- Print out namebadges (if you're using them: sticky labels are an easier alternative)
- Buy in supplies : tea/coffee/milk, pens, flipchart pads, roll of sticky labels
- Make sure you can describe how to get to the venue from the local station, bus station, nearest carpark etc.
On the day itself
1 hour before:
- Put up signs telling people where to go
- Move tables, chairs etc into hacker-friendly layout
- Make sure the tea, coffee, milk etc are out ready
During the hackathon:
- Have fun!
When the hackathon ends:
- Tidy up.
- Make sure local media get pictures and video so you can get sweet press.
- Follow up with your attendees - find out what worked, what didn't, and let them know about what's happening next.
People Things
I'd love to have some advice on how to get people excited about and joining in a hackathon. Please add it here! Please...
How to get people excited about your hackathon
How to get ideas starting to roll
Sending out emails/tweets just stating that the event is on is a missed opportunity. Better yet is to post ideas or data of interest.. with obligatory link
Good ideas from all over this wikisite
Put photos up on flickr
Have an irc channel for all cities
Invite your local mayor to the event!
How Ottawa did it
Hi folks, this is @edwardog from @opendataottawa. I just finished writing a massive letter to a friend looking to raise a hackfest of their own so I thought I might copy/paste the relevant bit here.
Please rearrange into the rest of the page as best you see fit.
The way we run ours is:
1) Write a letter stating what you want. This clarifies a vision for everyone, most importantly yourself. Keep it short and simple. Be aware that open data is boring and useless on its own and needs to be crossbred with itself and/or visualized before it's interesting.
2) Pick a date and a venue. I encourage you to pick December 4th and City Hall. The city is usually open to this sort of thing and you want a free venue that's central, accessible, and symbolic.
3) Give this letter to a designer friend for them to turn into a website. Designers love doing typographic treatment. Anywhere in the letter that's needing an explanation or more detail can probably be solved with some informative visual. Do more showing than telling.
Stick to a one-pager. Skip the blog for now. Make sure to add a Google Analytics tracker and throw some Facebook Like button action in there along with a "Tweet This".
4) Get a Twitter account and start messaging local high-profile connectors and give them your sweet website and a link to an EventBrite you can use for keeping a loose idea of how your event is doing.
5) Start hustling and passing out your URL at all the networking and user group events you can canvas. Talk to local media. Talk to university radio. Talk to university journalists. Get YouTube spots of you pitching the event and of street interviews with regular citizens about your event. Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK2VHBgjxek
If you have collateral (flyers or cards) to pass out, that's great. Show up at all sorts of events like hackspaces and crafting meetups. You want as representative a sample of your city to show up as possible. Check these pictures out for an idea: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=open+data+ottawa
You want to see stuff like http://www.flickr.com/photos/edwardog/4613101572/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/edwardog/4612351049/ in particular, as that's who's actually going to use the citizen apps/tools you build the most. Do not focus on targeting geeks.
6) Create a wiki on piggyback on someone else's. I recommend the latter: http://www.opendataday.org/wiki/City_Events and http://www.opendataday.org/wiki/Oxford,_UK for an example of how to start. (Though I bet you could do far better.)
7) Establish a place on your wiki for people to pitch ideas by making the page and posting some of your own, while leaving your personal @hyfen [Photo journalist] tag as a template for how to post.
8) Start working Twitter by following-back each legit follower and following up with a personal message (“Sweet Flickr portfolio!”), context, and a simple call to action that’s immediately doable like “Thought about posting an idea about bike routes at http://wiki/ideapage?”
This action has a way higher conversion rate in regard to turning a passive follower into an engaged participant than just following them back. It also helps you refine your pitch to different audiences. Instead of posting an idea, you might know that someone could help build a "local apps" page or match datasets to potential ideas.
(On that note, approach libraries and ask if they'd be up for helping you garden the wiki during reference hour downtime. They love this sort of thing.)
9) Run mini versions of the event, complete with you pitching at the front of the room. Even if everyone knows why they're there, just do it to get used to it and refine things. Just a few pre-meetups helped us figure out what worked, what didn't, and introduced all sorts of interested folks to each other which made for a more effective hackfest later as lots of folks could skip the awkward introductions.
Give out flyers and stuff about the hackfest.
10) Run your actual event. Realize that your target audience may actually only be a few people like a councillor and the CIO if the point of the event is to convince them that this sort of thing is a good idea. Conveniently arrange for press to show up at an opportune time as both of these people love that stuff.
Minor event running notes:
a) Keep it to 3-4 hours max. This means you'll have a better chance of having a full room, which is the kinda the whole point to having all the ingredients in the right place at the right time.
b) Assign some responsible people who showed at the mini-hackfests the role of Greeter. Just like their Gap counterparts, these people say hi to newcomers, help them get oriented, introduce them to each other, and find them a place to start. Do not put a table in front of them - you want them walking around and chatting. None of this “here's a sharpie and a name tag, kthxbai”.
c) Make sure the media know what is happening in as far advance as possible, and steer them towards people who they should be talking to.
d) Invite all the camera/video people you know to do their thing and post as soon as possible. Their work is is more important for keeping community momentum going for later, but it's good to do now.
e) Make sure you have a place to showcase and document people's work. It could be as simple as a wiki page showing the apps/datasets built, or something like http://apps.opendataottawa.ca - make sure to work this into the closing presentation. People will stick around to see their own stuff on a big screen. Not only is it awesome, but it also gives you a crowd to take pictures of and introduce as a whole to city staff present.
f) Cheat. We had apps in development way in advance that we checked in on at the mini-hackfests, which also acted as showcases. By having the app 95% ready going into the 3-4 hour hackfest, we could show off some really sweet looking/useful stuff to the crowd and media.
g) Food is not as important as drinks. Get a few cases of bottled water and you should be set. We got in contact with some restaurant friends and they happily sponsored the event with cans and bottles of the usual.
