The perfect hackathon timeline
The most effective hackathon agenda for your event in 2024
Published on the 16th of July 2024. 3 min read.
Hackathon timeline
The hackathon timeline is the agenda for your event.
It marks the timings and phases of each step, providing a clear picture of how the hackathon will evolve in time and what will be required from the participants in each phase.
A well-designed hackathon timeline has multiple benefits such as increasing your event’s credibility and boosting registrations.
Participants, mentors, Jury Members, and stakeholders are keener to participate if they know exactly what and when.
That’s why it’s important to clearly outline it on your hackathon platform, website, or landing page.
Let’s explore the details of a perfect example of an optimised hackathon timeline, deriving from our past hackathons experience.
Have a good read!
1. ✅ Registrations and team formation start
This is the date when the participants can register for your event.
Here are the minimum hackathon planning steps that should be completed before going live:
Terms and Conditions
Event description
Graphic material
Hackathon platform ready
Registration form
Team creation form
2. ⭕ Registrations close
Individual participants are not allowed to register from this moment onwards.
The registration form should be closed before sending registration deadline reminders to all the interested participants’ candidates.
3. 🕵️♀️ Ideation phase starts
This is the time to go live with your planned live sessions.
These are the most common best practices for the ideation phase webinars and events:
Technical sessions with experts
Matchmaking and team formation dedicated event
Inspirational session with high-profile speakers
Q&A with participants
We wrote an in-depth description of these live sessions in our hackathon guide.
The ideation phase usually ends before the hackathon starts.
4. ❌ Team formation closes
From this point onwards individuals are not allowed to create or join a team.
5. 🏁 Hackathon kick-off
This short event is usually hosted on the morning of the first day of the hackathon weekend and should last less than 30 minutes.
It’s often structured as follows:
A high-profile stakeholder will welcome all the participants
The organisers will share the hack day 1 detailed agenda
6. ✍️Deliverables deadlines
During the hackathon days, the participants are requested to submit several deliverables, each one depending on each hackathon’s specifics.
A perfect example of hackathon deliverables are:
📃 Deliverable 1 - Project Summary
🗃️️ Deliverable 2 - Presentation
🎞️ Deliverable 3 - Recorded Pitch
🔗 Deliverable 4 - Link to the Solution
The deliverables are customised and different for each event.
They should be explained in a Hack Guide to be shared with the participants.
We wrote more about this topic here.
7. 👩⚖️ Evaluation
This is the moment to wrap up all the deliverables from the teams and send them to the Jury Panel for evaluation.
This phase can be split into different evaluation stages if necessary.
For example:
Selection of the competing ideas
Selection of the finalists
Winners
Check out more about this matter in this article.
8. 🎉 Award event
Celebrating a successful hackathon is extremely important!
That is why these types of events are usually held physically in a great location and also streamed online to maximise engagement and participation.
All the stakeholders should be invited, including customers, providers, and affiliates.
Conclusion
This hackathon timeline derives from tons of best practices and experience and can be used as a general reference for your next hackathon.
You might want to design a simpler or more complex one in case your hackathon has diverse event-specific phases.
Examples of those sessions could be:
Idea generation
Prototyping
How to pitch to the Jury Members
AMA (ask me anything) with the Mentors and organisers
Idea pitching session
…and more.
Get in touch today if you need help in designing a perfect timeline for your hackathon that considers all your event’s specifics.
