Hackathon is, first of all, people. And the effectiveness of its holding for the organizer directly depends on the mood of the participants and their readiness for creative search. Our company has held hackathons among employees many times, made mistakes and acquired useful knowledge. I want to share my experience with hackathons and draw attention to the details that should be taken into account in order to get the maximum effect.
What is hackathon and how did the term come about
The term hackathon originated in 1999 from the merger of the words hacker and marathon. The developers of the then giants OpenBSD and Sun Microsystems organized (separately from each other) something like a forum, where programmers from different countries gathered to communicate with each other. That is, it was a hobby club.
Now the clubbing, of course, has remained, all the communicative finds too. But today hackathons are more specific. They gather programmers to create a new product, promote fresh ideas, programs or make improvements to applications, technologies, frameworks and development tools. Hackathons are being organized on cryptography, OS, mobile applications, design, user experience, validation and much more. Although programming, of course, remains the main task.
Most often, a hackathon lasts two days or more. To help participants focus on specific ideas, the hackathon theme is announced. For example, Sun, during its JavaOne conference in 1999, announced the task of writing a Java program to support the new Palm V device that would use infrared to communicate with other Palm users.
In addition, the participant has the opportunity to work with the technologies of a large company and try his hand at them. What the hell is not kidding, maybe the company will like your technological solution, and you will receive an offer of cooperation.
Well, in general, the main attributes of hackathons are not the most correct food and sleepless nights. And it’s also a lot of fun. You always feel excitement and challenge, like in sports, when it is important for you to win, among other things, in order to prove that your project is better than dozens of others. A healthy spirit of competition has not been canceled.
How to conduct a hackathon
When conducting a hackathon, you should have a good understanding of what you are doing it for, how you will use the experience and results. Because programmers are not stupid, and if you organized a hackathon with the sole purpose of collecting e-mails of participants and then bombarding them with spam letters, then you will quickly be bored.
