Welcome to the Overview Section!

This is one of the most important things that you are going to have to look at and think of before moving onto the next steps of organizing a hackathon. First of all, you need to decide on the where you want it to be (can be a specific area like San Francisco), what kind of hackathon you want it to be (all girls, all HS students, API focused, etc.), how many people you want to host (high school is usually 100+ and college is 500+) and how many hours you want it to be (24H vs 36H), when you would want it. For dates, you want it to be a weekend where no other event is happening, no holidays, and not in the summer. Additionally, know your hook. There are a lot of hackathons out there and in order to stand out, there should be something that hooks in your attendees and sponsors. It can go from being the only hackathon in your city or API focused. Most companies have a quarterly budget that they can give to events like hackathons and by summer, they have already give everything out so it's best to start early!

Afterwards, you want to find a reliable and solid team with members in at least each team. Also, you need to decide what kind of team organization you want. Usually, hackathons are organized by a lead director with four different teams underneath them including logistics, sponsorship, tech, and outreach. However, there is an option to dual as lead and as another director.

Depending on how large your event is, everything on this guide can be scaled! Reach out to me at [email protected] if you are ever lost, confused, or just have a question/comment!

Remember that each team is equally as important as the rest because without one, you wouldn't have an event!

Find a Team

For a 100+ student hackathon, there is a recommended total amount of 8 people (2 people per team). For any hackathon bigger, it depends on how much people you feel comfortable with it. Usually, lead organizers would send a form to recruit members and post the form through school announcement or Facebook groups. Then, it is suggested that you make sure to go through interviews. Whether it be getting to know someone's work habits or social media, going through video call/face-to-face interviews is best for getting to know someone before you add them onto the team. Not only do we gauge why they want to be on the team, we also get to interact with them to see their traits and personality. Through talking to each member, you also find out what mode of communication they want to be contacted on. A lot of organizations use Slack to talk within their group. Additionally, another way of organization is utilizing Google Drive, Messenger, and GitHub.

Setting Expectations

Although organizing is all fun and games, there is also a level of expectations set for organizers. There needs to be a sort of contract between lead and members to ensure that they understand that they will be in constant communication and responsible to turn in quality work on time. Additionally, there should a handbook, guides, and goals for organizers that informs them of how to set up things and the way of doing their tasks. For example, for tech team, if lead organizers want there to be a certain theme, it is their responsibility to tell the ones building and designing the website. We aim to be clear and concise. For organizers that are having some issues with working with fellow organizers, there can be a strikes system input, meaning if they reach three strikes, then they are let go. This allows for both sides to be transparent of what is going wrong.

Setting Goals

As an organizer, it's always best to set goals. Through goals, you can push yourself beyond a "limit" and always reach new heights. Additionally, it becomes something for the entire team to reach for which can motivate team members to do more and work harder. Each team can have goals to hit by a certain time frame and these can be as little from finishing the sponsorship packet to raising X amount of money.

Real-life Example

With Superposition, I knew that I wanted to create an all girls hackathon in order to close the gender gap in technology. Additionally, I held it on June 10 to 11, 2017 which was not ideal since a lot of students were on finals week or in summer break. As for team, I recruited all from Girls Who Code alum and had around 2 to 4 members on each team. For expectations, I created a guide for each team and placed it in the "Superposition" Google Drive for all to see. For goals, I originally started with X amount of sponsorship money and tripled it by the time of the event.