Three Types of Harmful Hackathons
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Three Types of Harmful Hackathons
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Re: Three Types of Harmful Hackathons
#2Last Startup Weekend I went to had 7 devs out of 110 people. Definitely an issue.
EDIT: All but one of the 11 teams were tech/programming required startups guys. I'm not talking about "Startup Weekend" as a whole, I'm talking about my experience at the event I went to.
Re: Three Types of Harmful Hackathons
#3Last Startup Weekend I went to had 7 devs out of 110 people. Definitely an issue. EDIT: All but one of the 11 teams were tech/programming required startups guys. I'm not talking about "Startup Weekend" as a whole, I'm talking about my experience at the event I went to.
Does Start Up weekend specifies that the start up has to do with tech? Unless you're saying that 103 people were the "idea person" I don't see what's wrong with that
Re: Three Types of Harmful Hackathons
#4Last Startup Weekend I went to had 7 devs out of 110 people. Definitely an issue. EDIT: All but one of the 11 teams were tech/programming required startups guys. I'm not talking about "Startup Weekend" as a whole, I'm talking about my experience at the event I went to.
Does Start Up weekend specifies that the start up has to do with tech? Unless you're saying that 103 people were the "idea person" I don't see what's wrong with that
I can't speak for all Startup Weekend events, but at the one I went too, every single project was a tech startup. On the team I was on, the vibe from the "idea person" was definitely "How can I get a developer to help me for free?"
Re: Three Types of Harmful Hackathons
#5If you're an API provider you can do everything in this post but also say "and by the way, we will give you X free credits to use against our API if you want to build something on top of it." You still might not get as much battle hardening, etc as if it was a hard requirement, but it might totally change the dynamic.
Re: Three Types of Harmful Hackathons
#6Just skip these things and write code for people who will pay you, or open source something useful.
Re: Three Types of Harmful Hackathons
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does Start Up weekend specifies that the start up has to do with tech? Unless you're saying that 103 people were the "idea person" I don't see what's wrong with that
I can't speak for all Startup Weekend events, but at the one I went too, every single project was a tech startup. On the team I was on, the vibe from the "idea person" was definitely "How can I get a developer to help me for free?"
from the blog post:
>Restrict to those who are there to code, design, or build something, not to write a business plan - this gives participants the freedom to work on projects that don't need to have profit potential.
That makes sense, but you know, don't restrict it to tech start ups. And from what I read at the SW website, it DOESN'T have to be tech. How were the projects from that SW you mention?
Re: Three Types of Harmful Hackathons
#8Running a Hackathon costs money.
We can have a hackathon where:
- The costs are split up by the number of participants.
- A bunch of teams participate.
- Everyone builds whatever they want, and they own it.
- There can be multiple show-and-tells, to allow teams to ask / answer questions, get to know each-other, and iterate.
- Everyone walks away having made some wonderful new friends, having learned a thing or two, and also maybe even some useful code.
If someone else is organizing, and you're participating for free, then it will always come with strings attached. Remember, if you're not the customer, then you're the product!
Re: Three Types of Harmful Hackathons
#9Just skip these things and write code for people who will pay you, or open source something useful.
I think there's value in writing code for yourself at times. Every other time in life engineers are told by their managers, professors, and anyone else who's overseeing them what to make and do. Doing a hackathon in this format minimizes that pressure and gives people a time and place to gather and just be creative for themselves.
Re: Three Types of Harmful Hackathons
#10Last Startup Weekend I went to had 7 devs out of 110 people. Definitely an issue. EDIT: All but one of the 11 teams were tech/programming required startups guys. I'm not talking about "Startup Weekend" as a whole, I'm talking about my experience at the event I went to.
Last one I went to - 2012 - was a whole mess of tech folks. One of the larger teams had... 17(?) people on it, 10-11 of which were 'technical' of some stripe. I walked by and heard 3 folks arguing "less vs sass".
Our team had just 4 people on it, and I was the sole tech person. We came in second place (well, tied for second).