Don't Attend a Hackathon

>If you attend a hackathon with a preconceived notion of recruiting a team to build your Vision, on your terms, for your benefit, you’re doing it wrong. Instead, you should attend to learn more about the skills and understanding you need or that you need to hire for in your team.

alternatively (and perhaps controversially) if you have some cash and can plan a project out and write down proper specs you can hire someone online for $15/hr to do the work for you. They get paid and you walk away with some kind of project implemented.

Re: Don't Attend a Hackathon

#8

Post by mrspeaker » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 4:35 PM UTC

theseatoms wrote: post #4

Article should be re-titled, "Don't write code for free at a hackathon."

To be fair, the title was a (not-so-subtle) "twist" in that you thought it was going to tell you not to go to hackathons, but it flipped it by saying "Don't attend a hackathon... if you're just looking for devs to implement your ideas".

It was telling the "ideas people" to go away, not the devs to avoid them.

Re: Don't Attend a Hackathon

#9

Post by shreve » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 4:36 PM UTC

theseatoms wrote: post #4

Article should be re-titled, "Don't write code for free at a hackathon."

Isn't that what a hackathon is about? Maybe, "Don't work for free at a hackathon".

Writing code for one's own idea is play. Writing code for someone else's vision is work.

Re: Don't Attend a Hackathon

#10

Post by caseysoftware » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 4:41 PM UTC

bullgod66 wrote: post #5

Although this article makes a good point, it doesn't offer any practical suggestions for how to avoid the issue entirely.

Original author here.

I did a followup on this post here: http://clarify.io/blog/howto-be-successful-at-a-hackathon/ and just linked it from this post.