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Hackathon Be Gone

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Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#11

Post by rememberlenny »

marssaxman wrote: post #5
rememberlenny wrote: post #3

I've been organizing Hackathons for the past few years. They have been incredibly successful in a number of ways. The group that organizes them has recognized a few powerful factors: - The organizers are diverse and have a wide array of skills I didnt start the group that I have collaborated with, but I immediately tried to contribute to the best of my ability. We have people who are good at promoting, thinking about…

I'm curious: how do you market these events? I have literally never in my life encountered a hackathon directly and only know they exist because people talk about them; they are a purely theoretical construct in my world. Through what channels do people discover your events?

You can tell from the examples that these are mainly media related. This industry is pretty tight nit with preexisting networks of meetups/listservs/influencers.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#12

Post by nxzero »

hoodoof wrote: post #10

I takes me the better part of six months to build something worthwhile. I know I'm a slow programmer but it's still hard to see that anything but trivialities can be built in a weekend.

Point is to get something done, force you to make choice, have a deadline, etc. -- not something else, like production ready code.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#13

Post by jmspring »

I've never been a fan of "hackathons" for long term projects going back a number of years.

That said, the group I am part of, we regularly engage in focused "hackfests", where there is a clear goal, people work together, and a lot gets done in 3-5 days.

Is it always complete, no, but for solving spot problems, short term deep dives can be great.

Generalizing that, as hacktahons try to, there will be some interesting successes, but that won't be the norm.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#14

Post by escherize »

Going to corperate sponsored hackathons and hacking on your own side project is the way I've really enjoyed myself at a few hackathons. I don't really want to learn $COMPANY's API, so I just hack on whatever and enjoy the atmosphere.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#15

Post by marssaxman »

wgman wrote: post #9
marssaxman wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious: how do you market these events? I have literally never in my life encountered a hackathon directly and only know they exist because people talk about them; they are a purely theoretical construct in my world. Through what channels do people discover your events?

https://mlh.io/seasons/s2016/events Is very popular for promotion.

Are hackathons just a university thing, then...?

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#16

Post by fgandiya »

Personally, the main reason I go to these hackathons is just to expose myself to a bigger network and places with stronger CS communities than the one at my really small liberal arts college just to see what I'm missing out on (which is a lot).It seems like a necessary evil and it has worked in a way since I've finally been able to get an internship interview from it.

Otherwise, I agree with his points. Not sleeping for 24+ hours really takes its toll, especially if you need to drive back to where you came from. Food is mostly junk, but this one other hackathon I went to had really well-made food, so there's that. They have been unrewarded since I always lose steam before I get to make an MVP and they do seem to be very commercialized and they're really trying to get groundbreaking stuff from us within a weekend, like the last hackathon had very specific prizes relating to using certain company's API as well has performing "health innovations".

I also like Brian's suggestions to provide more specific hackathons so that I know exactly what to expect from them. These events take up a huge portion of my weekends theI should be using on school, so it seems like a good idea to pick those which seem most useful at the time.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#17

Post by p_eter_p »

The worst is company hackathons. I will always remember the look on my boss's face when I told him I was quite happy to participate in the (mandatory) 24 hour hackathon, as long as he paid me for my time outside of normal business hours. Turns out it wasn't so mandatory.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#18

Post by alexashka »

Hackathons are a fundamentally unsustainable, bad idea that can only thrive on young people having more energy than they know what to do with.

I imagine they'll continue to drag along, like most conferences, like most people, who just don't know what else to do, so they do something that someone else said was a good idea and isn't intimidating.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#19

Post by EdHominem »

rhizome wrote: post #2

I'm sure good work comes out of these, but I think it would probably happen anyway. I really don't understand why people are going to these things still.

The ones I go to are free and don't ask for ownership of the product, only pictures and screenshots where applicable to advertise the event.

It's like working in a hackspace for a night (which I often do when on the road) combined with a friendly competition.

I'd avoid a for-profit hackathon like the plague.

Re: Hackathon Be Gone

#20

Post by fapjacks »

hoodoof wrote: post #10

I takes me the better part of six months to build something worthwhile. I know I'm a slow programmer but it's still hard to see that anything but trivialities can be built in a weekend.

At least for myself and my best friend (we do hackathons together), we like the brainstorming that's borne out of it. We don't need the hackathons to do this, but it seems to have hit on just the right formula for the both of us to come up with some pretty cool project ideas. In fact, we work on our ideas far more often after the hackathons have ended than we do during the X hours of the hackathon.

But I think companies that try to wedge "hackathons" into their employees' schedules as some cool twist on getting more free (or very cheap) work out of them should burn in hell.

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