WWCode Kingston Directors Dana Dalling and F.J. Genus Plan Their First Hackathon

The WWCode Kingston network has successfully hosted our first hackathon! Now that the event has concluded (and it was awesome!), we do believe we have garnered enough insight into this process to provide aid for other hackathon-planning virgins by outlining the bare minimum needed to host a successful event. We attempted to put them in order from start to finish, but some of these tasks run concurrently – just don't skip any :)

Identify the Projects:

So you want to host a hackathon, but why? To what end? Yes, we're all trying to get more women into the technology field, but which skills are you looking to enhance with this particular event? What is it that you are seeking to build?

For our first hackathon we kept it simple. We identified two non-profit initiatives that were tech-related and did not have websites, and then we offered to build them. We chose these projects because not all the women in our network are particularly familiar with programming languages we would typically use to build software. Most of them are just learning how to code and were particularly interested in web development, so HTML/CSS/JS it is. These are the technologies with which we have been familiarizing them, so it would only be fair to host a hackathon surrounding those technologies.

For your hackathon, identify what the women in your network are familiar with and try to find a project (or projects) for which you can use those technologies to complete.

Pick a Date:

Given the diversity of members within your network, this decision is probably the most crucial regarding participant turnout. Avoid holiday weekends, as those reduce the likelihood of the participation of your target audience (in Jamaica, anyway).Give yourself (and your leadership team) enough time to properly plan and finalize the other things on this list. Be realistic about your expectations and deadline based on your time commitment. If you (and your leadership team) are generally very busy, give yourself extra time to account for all the things life will throw at you between the moment you start planning and the intended hackathon date – and trust me, life will throw things at you.

Find a Location:

Comfort is paramount. Depending on your expected turnout, obtain a space that can accommodate them and their friends. We (ambitiously) expected turnout to be at a minimum of 30 persons, so we obtained a space that could hold approximately 45 persons. That way, whether the total attendees were greater or fewer than our predicted target, there would be enough space for everyone to be comfortable.

Ensure the seating arrangements are suitable, and an air-conditioned room is always a plus (arguably mandatory).

Stable Wi-Fi is absolutely mandatory. This one speaks for itself. Also, ensure you obtain the required security information for the network even a day in advance if possible.

Identify Prizes:

Incentives are wonderful motivators. Not everyone needs them, but they are great things to provide. Ensure that whatever your giveaway prizes are, they are of actual benefit to the women we are encouraging to continue participating in technology. Dana (director for the Kingston network) had the brilliant idea of awarding CodeSchool memberships to the top three participants. The memberships granted its winners an entire month of access to all the coding goodness that CodeSchool has to offer. Yum!

Get Sponsors:

Attempt to get sponsors for everything if possible. Refreshments, prizes, the location – if you need it, try to obtain a sponsor for it. This is one of the activities to which you should dedicate a lot of time. Corporate sponsors are (in our opinion) very busy, and it's only polite to give the entity from which you are requesting sponsorship enough time to make their decision and inform you of what they can commit to. A lot of “no”'s may come your way but do not be discouraged. Reach out to different organizations and someone is bound to say yes. Probably not in a timely fashion, though - so again, account for that.

Inform the Masses:

You've got the ball a rolling on your first hackathon event. By now, everything above is in the pipeline and all you need to do is finalize the arrangements. Wonderful! Now is the time to inform the masses. Create your Meetup event and take to sharing it with your networks; social and otherwise. We actually created our Meetup with just the date at first and then updated it once we found a location.

Market your Event:

Post, post and post some more. Give potential attendees enough time to schedule the event into their calendar and constantly remind them about the hackathon via social media. Linking back to the meetup event page is also suggested. It provides background into your network and as someone else might just decide to join the network, that kind of information would be good to provide.

Set Up Projects for Collaboration:

Now that the projects have been decided upon, it’s time to set them up for collaboration beforehand if possible. We used GitHub and decided that the top three people with the most pushes would be the prize winners. Since we were working on websites, we set up the project folders and outlined the basic structure of the web pages so participants could focus more on developing than figuring out proper semantic structure.

Have Fun!

Congratulations! You’ve been through every task on this list and have finalized all the arrangements for your first hackathon. When the day arrives, it is advised to get to the location early and just double-check that everything is in order (of course, you can also do this from the day before). Remember the aim is to have fun while coding and developing something new. Revel in the collaborative atmosphere the hackathon provides, meet new people, increase your membership base and most importantly, enjoy yourself!