Welcome to the Logistics Section!

The operations/logistics team is mainly configured around administrative work. This team organizes the days-of operations and makes sure that everything goes smoothly which includes primarily dealing with the venue, foods, and schedules.

Overview

  • Catering, Foods - negotiating, bringing best quality at best price.

  • Preparing full Schedule and space of event

  • Reaching to Mentors, Speakers & Judges

  • Waivers and legalities for attendees

Goal

Provide the best hacking experience to everyone—newcomers, experienced, sponsors and mentors.

Venue Logistics

The operations team will be in close contact with the venue in case anything happens. Make sure to get familiar with the venue a couple days before. Things to look out for includes:

  • Wifi - is their wifi reliable? do u need to get the password? should u get wifi packs?
  • Entrances - is there a main entrance set up for everyone to get through? are there any backdoors to close?
  • Safety exits/procedures - this is something you should ask the venue.
  • Food areas - does the sponsor want to keep the food in one specific area?
  • Floor plans - need to make these for the participants so they know where to go
  • Liability issues - does the venue allow underage people to be in the building overnight?
  • Security - depends on the venue
  • Tables - does the venue provide any?
  • Chairs - does the venue provide any?
  • Hacking areas - where is a centralized area where we can see them?
  • Opening/Closing ceremony areas - set one up
  • Sleeping areas - set one up
  • Outlets/plugs - is there enough?
  • AV stuffs - do we have that?

Budget

When you first start preparing for your event, be sure to create a budget with your team with what you believe will be the total cost of the event including costs from (use Excel):

  • Food
    • Should be separated by sections into how ever many meals you will provide
    • Drinks (water, soda, juices, etc.)
    • Snacks (make sure that they aren't all just junk food)
  • Branding
    • Tshirts
    • Flyers
    • Banners
    • Stickers (StickerMule)
    • Name tags
  • Venue
    • Cleaning fee
    • Security fee
    • WiFi
    • Tables and chairs
    • Event insurance
  • Transportation
    • If you provide travel reimbursements
  • Miscellaneous
    • Emergency fund (should be around $500 to $2000)
    • Prizes
    • Equipment
    • Buses
    • Hardware
    • Web hosting

A lot of these items are optional and do not have to be at a hackathon to be successful! Make sure you have a budget to make your goals of amount of sponsorship money. Realistically, hackathons with around 150+ attendees use around $3000 and only scale up. However, it really depends on your venue.

Food Logistics

One of the most important money-draining things is food. For 24-hour hackathons, we usually need to provide 5 meals including a midnight snack. Although most hackathons opt out for pizza, others go for pasta, burritos, or sandwiches. It's also very important to ask participants if they have any food restrictions and accommodate for them. While the sponsorship focuses on finding monetary/API/swag sponsors, the logistics team needs to find food sponsors to donate things like drinks/snacks/meals. In return, we protect their brand at our hackathon which expose their brand to a younger audience. Make sure the food is healthy! Also, it's good to have some sweets to keep your hackers awake.

Waivers

With most of our events hosting high schoolers, there are some legalities regarding having people under 18 staying overnight in a building. In order to overcome this problem, Hack+ provides Waiver Management which essentially gives organizers a link to a signable PDF through DocuSign. Once you send that link to your attendees and they complete signing it, both attendees and organizers will have copies sent to you. During check-in, organizers will easily be able to check for their waivers and sign the attendee in!

Gear

Another money-drainer is attendee/team gear. There are several brands out there that like to help out organizers and give a discounted price. However, you do need to be sure which shirts are good quality, how many different sizes you should buy, and decide on colors and design. Usually, Hack+ events work along with Brandmakers and Ultrapress.

Schedules

For hackathons, it's best that you have students that can drive. Throughout the event, there will be several food runs and getting supplies which causes for the need of a schedule. Not only is there a schedule for hackers, there is also schedules for organizers, sponsors, and mentors. Each has specific details of where they should be and be doing down to the hour (opening ceremony is usually down to the minute).

Working with Sponsors/Mentors/Workshops/Judges

One of the most important things at a hackathon is the professionals there. First-time hackers depend on workshops to get them accustomed with the fundamentals of programming and mentors to get help at any time. Therefore, the most influential people there will be the mentors. The logistics team wants to find quality mentors from good technical backgrounds. You can reach out to them through your hackahton's sponsors, personal connections, or even Facebook groups. When you start to organize the workshop schedule, make sure to have intro workshops be at the beginning. Also, be sure that you have a centralized area where hackers know where to do to look for help!

Guides

Be sure to make guides for everyone! This goes over the basic details of the event, what time they should arrive, important contacts for them to have, what they should expect, how to approach people, and what is expected of them. All sponsors and mentor should come at least half a hour early to get brief on their assigned task. For judges, they should come a hour before, in case our schedule gets messed up. There should be a system/judging style detailed out for them to work with.

Judging

At the end of your event, there is judging which usually takes around 1 to 2 hours depending on how many people and hacks you have. Most events will have anywhere from 5 to 20 judges and 2-5 minutes to judge a hack; additionally, the way of judging usually go one of two ways—either science fair style (each team will have multiple times to present) or presentation style (each team will be given once to present). Science fair style gives a team opportunities to present and fully develop their pitch, makes judges walk around everyone, and involves a sense that the team is only given viewpoints of a few selected judges -> all depends if each judge gets a chance to look at each hack or each hack only has 2 judges. It is possible for teams to score high on certain judges and low on other judges. Presentation style gives a team an opportunity to pitch to all of the attendees at the event, one chance to "wow" everyone, makes the transition from each hack quicker, and judges can listen to all hacks. Both styles are commonly used but science fair style is used for more than hackathons with 12 or more teams!

Prizes

Although hackathons are more than competitions, there is still prizes to acknowledge hacks. Make sure to keep a budget for prizes to include more incentive to make something. Most hackathons like to use Devpost.com to organize their submitting and have all of their prizes there. A tip is to not include top 1, 2, 3 prizes and instead have "Best Android App" to promote working more than competing.

Real-life Example

Here is Superposition II's schedule + Floor Plan: bit.ly/schedule_sp2, Hacker Guide: bit.ly/hacker_sp2

Here's our floor plan edits:

results matching ""

    No results matching ""