Thanks for this write-up! For me, a 10 hour hackathon sounds rather short, since with the lectures and evaluations it only leaves a few hours for the actual hacking, but I have only participated in hackathons where people actually programmed something, so maybe that makes the difference? Did the time feel short to you? Did you get any feedback on the event length from the participants or did somebody say they won’t participate because time commitment seems too big (since you mention it is was a big time commitment from them)?
Great questions! From the 10 hours only 5-6 were spent hacking, which felt as short. Some participants mentioned in the feedback form they would have loved to see a 2-day event, whereas others mentioned that they thought the length to be great. When we marketed the event there were students mentioning they preferred to spend the weekend not doing much or that they thought of themselves as not being ambitious enough. I think this amount of time balanced well the quality of the event, the entry barrier for participants (time commitment), the costs of venue and food & the ask from volunteers. Next time we could do a networking & briefing session the evening before the hackathon (perhaps online if necessary?), in that way we can add some hacking time during the day itself.
thanks for the info! I didn’t really get the part on ambitiousness, how is that connected to the amount of time participants want to spend on the event? (I can interpret this in either “they wouldn’t do anything else anyway so they could as well be here the whole weekend” or “they don’t want to commit to anything for longer than 1 day since they are not used to committing to things”.)
I encountered both types of participants (the ones that showed up because they had ‘not much better to do’ and the ones that are not used to committing). My impression was that most participants were ambitious and that they liked a challenge. The effect of the length of the event on potential participants with varying levels of ambition can be a bit ambiguous here. With a longer event it is also more likely that potential participants have other things planned during part of the event. My gut feeling says that making the commitment bigger than a day for an introduction hackathon (without coding) makes it less likely for people show up.
Thanks for this write-up! For me, a 10 hour hackathon sounds rather short, since with the lectures and evaluations it only leaves a few hours for the actual hacking, but I have only participated in hackathons where people actually programmed something, so maybe that makes the difference? Did the time feel short to you? Did you get any feedback on the event length from the participants or did somebody say they won’t participate because time commitment seems too big (since you mention it is was a big time commitment from them)?
Great questions! From the 10 hours only 5-6 were spent hacking, which felt as short. Some participants mentioned in the feedback form they would have loved to see a 2-day event, whereas others mentioned that they thought the length to be great. When we marketed the event there were students mentioning they preferred to spend the weekend not doing much or that they thought of themselves as not being ambitious enough. I think this amount of time balanced well the quality of the event, the entry barrier for participants (time commitment), the costs of venue and food & the ask from volunteers. Next time we could do a networking & briefing session the evening before the hackathon (perhaps online if necessary?), in that way we can add some hacking time during the day itself.
thanks for the info! I didn’t really get the part on ambitiousness, how is that connected to the amount of time participants want to spend on the event? (I can interpret this in either “they wouldn’t do anything else anyway so they could as well be here the whole weekend” or “they don’t want to commit to anything for longer than 1 day since they are not used to committing to things”.)
I encountered both types of participants (the ones that showed up because they had ‘not much better to do’ and the ones that are not used to committing). My impression was that most participants were ambitious and that they liked a challenge. The effect of the length of the event on potential participants with varying levels of ambition can be a bit ambiguous here. With a longer event it is also more likely that potential participants have other things planned during part of the event. My gut feeling says that making the commitment bigger than a day for an introduction hackathon (without coding) makes it less likely for people show up.