How to organise an online hackathon
The complete hackathon planning guide for 2024
Published on 4th of January 2024. 9 min read.
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What makes a successful hackathon?
Flawless planning, solid event design, and fast response to the unexpected is the answer.
In this roadmap, we will x-ray every step of planning and organising an online hackathon, from creating the hackathon name to the winners’ ceremony.
If you’re thinking about running a hackathon for your company, university, or institution, then running a hackathon is always a good idea, no matter what your final goal is.
The hackathon market is projected to keep growing in the next few years, and the reason is that companies find it a top-tier tool to get the results they want.
Whether you’d like to accelerate innovation, hire talents, create brand awareness, develop a product, or engage with your customers or employees, a hackathon is the best tool to reach your targets.
If you’re still not entirely sure of what a hackathon is, which problems a hackathon solves, or why your company should organise a hackathon you can read this article first.
What does it take to host a hackathon?
Create a catchy hackathon name
Hire the best designers for your event’s coordinated image
Chose appealing prizes to maximise participation
Select and form the best Mentors
Use a great hackathon platform
Run a holistic hackathon outreach campaign
Create a hack guide for participants
Organise hackathon webinars
Agree on a consistent evaluation process
Rely on pro moderators for the winners' announcement
Build flawless T&Cs for your hackathon
Conclusion
A hackathon starts with the naming:
1. Create a catchy hackathon name
Why creating a catchy hackathon name and tagline is important for your hackathon?
Here are some reasons:
1.1. Attracting participants
1.2. Setting the tone
The name of the hackathon can also help to set the tone for the event and convey its purpose or goals.
A name that is fun and playful might suggest a more relaxed and creative atmosphere, while a more serious or technical name might indicate a more focused and professional event.
1.3. Communicating the theme and purpose
The name and tagline can convey the theme and purpose of the hackathon, making it easier for participants to understand what the event is about and what they can expect to achieve by participating.
1.4. Generating social media buzz
A catchy name and tagline can help to generate social media buzz around the event.
Participants are more likely to share information about the hackathon on their social media profiles if they feel that the event has a catchy and memorable name and tagline.
Recap: Creating a catchy hackathon name and tagline can help attract more participants, establish a strong brand identity, communicate the theme and purpose of the event, and generate social media buzz.
2. Hire the best designers for your hackathon website
Relying on the best designers to create a fantastic hackathon coordinate image and promotional material for your event is crucial.
Here is why:
2.1. Boost registrations
High-quality and visually appealing promotional materials can help to attract more participants to the hackathon.
A well-designed website, social media posts, and other promotional materials can generate interest and excitement, and make the event stand out from other hackathons.
On the Meta Ads Library, you can take a look at how the other hackathon organisers name and promote their events and get inspiration.
2.2. Establishing a professional image
A professional and polished image for the hackathon website can establish a sense of credibility and professionalism.
This can make participants more likely to take the event seriously and feel that it is worth their time and effort.
Adding all the hackathon partners’ logos, mentors, and jury members takes your hackathon website to the next level.
2.3. User experience
The quality of your website's design can make a difference in attracting high-quality participants.
In terms of UX, A well-designed website with clear navigation, an intuitive interface, and attractive visuals can enhance the outreach campaign results, making it more likely for participants to sign up and participate in your hackathon.
2.4. Consistency
Hiring the best designers can help ensure consistency in design across all elements of your hackathon, including promotional materials, social media graphics, and other visual assets.
This can help to reinforce your brand image and make your event more recognisable and memorable.
In summary, hiring the best designers to create a fantastic hackathon website, coordinated image and promotional material is essential because it can help to attract more participants, establish a professional appearance, communicate the theme and purpose of the event, and enhance the user experience.
3. Chose appealing prizes to maximise participation
Goes without saying that choosing appealing prizes will maximise participation in a hackathon for several reasons.
3.1. Attracting more participants
A monetary prize is not always the answer.
Sometimes participants would like to get to know your ecosystem, hackathon partners, mentors, and jury members.
Having the chance to pitch an idea in front of a relevant audience at an important conference can also be very attractive.
Put yourself in the shoes of your hackathon participants’ target audience when setting your hackathon prizes and you will maximise participation and engagement.
3.2. Ensuring diversity
Appealing prizes can attract a larger and more diverse pool of participants, increasing the talent and creativity available to solve the challenge presented in the hackathon. This can result in a more robust and innovative set of solutions, benefiting not only the organisers and sponsors of the hackathon but also the wider community that stands to benefit from the solutions.
3.3. Enhancing the reputation of the hackathon
Offering appealing prizes can help to enhance the reputation of the hackathon.
Participants are more likely to have a positive view of the event if they feel that it is well-organised, solid, and offers valuable rewards.
3.4. Encouraging future participation
Great prizes can encourage participants to return for future hackathons.
Participants are more likely to participate again in the future if they have had a positive experience and feel that the prizes offered are worthwhile.
If you want to motivate participants, attract more (and diverse) participants, enhance the reputation of the event, and encourage future participation then make sure you take your time to define your hackathon’s prizes.
4. Select and form the best Mentors
The Mentors are the backbone of the hackathon support for participants. They play a crucial role for many reasons:
4.3. Drive results toward the hackathon goals
Mentors usually have middle management roles in the company organising the hackathon.
This means they have enough expertise and vision to make sure the team they are mentoring is swimming in the right direction, improving the quality of the projects that participants develop during the hackathon.
4.4. Establishing connections and networking opportunities
Mentors can help participants to establish connections and networking opportunities within the industry.
By introducing participants to potential employers, investors, or partners, they can help to create valuable opportunities for the participants to advance their careers.
Overall, selecting and forming the best mentors for a hackathon is important because it can provide guidance and support, enhance the learning experience, improve the quality of the projects, and establish connections and networking opportunities for the participants.
5. Use a great hackathon platform
Automating and centralising the hackathon process through a great hackathon platform is the best way to have everything under control during your hackathon.
5.2. Providing a centralised location for information
A good hackathon platform can provide a centralised location for all the information participants need about the event, including rules, timelines, prizes, and sponsors.
This can make it easier for participants to stay informed and engaged throughout the event.
5.3. Facilitating collaboration
A great hackathon platform can facilitate collaboration among participants by providing tools for communication and team formation such as the hackathon chat, including several channels like #general; #announcement; #mentors; #technicalsupport, etc.
This guarantees participants to connect, form teams, communicate with mentors, and work together more effectively.
5.4. Enhancing the judging process
A good hackathon platform can enhance the judging process by providing tools for evaluating and scoring projects.
This can make it easier and quicker for judges to evaluate projects objectively and consistently, and for organisers to manage the judging process.
A great hackathon platform can improve the overall participant experience by providing a user-friendly and engaging interface, and by making it easy for participants to navigate the event and stay informed about important updates.
6. Run a holistic hackathon outreach campaign
Organising a hackathon is an excellent way to bring together like-minded individuals with diverse backgrounds and skill sets to solve complex problems.
However, finding quality participants can be a challenge.
A holistic outreach campaign can help ensure that your hackathon attracts the right people, which can lead to a more successful event.
Our hackathon outreach campaign managers are certified to run ads on the main social media platforms:
Here are some facts about the holistic outreach campaign for your hackathon:
6.1. Address all the possible channels
By using a variety of outreach methods, such as social media paid campaigns, email marketing, and partnerships with other organisations, you can reach a wider audience of potential participants, making sure you’re addressing multiple channels.
Make sure no channels are left behind.
6.2. Diversify your paid ads strategy
When running a pay-per-click outreach campaign you want to diversify as much as possible.
Run your ads in parallel on Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Reddit Ads.
After gathering relevant data through A/B testing, you can move your budget to the most successful channel, ad group, or ads.
Make sure you create UTM links for each one of your ads to keep track of the GA4 events happening on your hackathon website.
6.3. Brand awareness and follower base
Running an outreach campaign for your hackathon can be the chance to build, grow, or consolidate an audience on several social media.
Therefore, the objective of a hackathon campaign can be not only to attract participants but also to gain followers on a determined social media platform.
6.4. Involve the hackathon stakeholders in your campaign
Unity is strength.
Create a main hackathon social media post and ask your hackathon partners, mentors, and jury members to reshare it within their networks: word of mouth is by no means dead.
Only by following these steps, you can make sure you’re doing everything possible to bring quality participants to your hackathon.
7. Create a hack guide for participants
Hackathons are exciting events that bring together creative minds to tackle complex problems.
However, for participants, it can be overwhelming to navigate the event without proper guidance.
That's why creating a hackathon hack guide can be a game-changer for your event.
7.1. Provides essential information
A hack guide provides participants with all the essential information they need to know about the event, such as the agenda, rules, and judging criteria.
This ensures that everyone is on the same page and has a clear understanding of what is expected of them.
7.2. Helps participants prepare for the event and get started quickly
Hackathons require participants to work in teams, and a hack guide can help them prepare for this.
The hack guide can include resources such as design thinking tools, examples of ideas, references, access to software, and technical guides.
This can help participants feel more confident and prepared to tackle the challenge at hand, together with saving them a lot of time so they can fully focus their efforts directly on their hackathon idea.
7.3. Enhances the overall experience
A hack guide can enhance the overall experience for participants by providing a sense of structure and guidance.
This can help participants stay focused and engaged throughout the event.
It also enhances the credibility of the event itself, showing the event is organised by hackathon specialists.
7.4. Improves the event's success
Providing participants with a hack guide can ultimately improve the success of the hackathon.
By ensuring that participants are prepared, informed, and engaged, you can increase the likelihood of creating impactful solutions.
Additionally, it can improve the overall satisfaction of participants, leading to positive feedback and future participation.
Key takeaways: creating a hackathon hack guide is an essential component of organising a successful hackathon.
It provides essential information, helps participants prepare, promotes inclusivity, enhances the overall experience, and improves the event's success.
By providing participants with the tools and resources they need to succeed, you can create a memorable and impactful event.
8. Organise hackathon webinars and live sessions
Here are some reasons why organising hackathon webinars is important:
8.1. Get participants to meet your brand, tools, and services
One or more live sessions can be completely dedicated to introducing your brand, tools, and services to the hackathon participants, who can be introduced and onboarded by your experts.
It’s usually a good idea to have a short introduction from a high-profile person from the company, to generate fuzz and improve the Live Session's importance and credibility.
At last, this kind of live session can be also technical, where the technical experts showcase demos of the software/tool/processes that should be leveraged during the hackathon.
8.2. Fill every information gap participants need to correctly compete
Hackathon webinars, such as info sessions and warm-ups, provide important information to participants about the event.
This includes details such as the challenges, rules, judging criteria, and timeline.
Together with the hack guide, this type of live session helps to ensure that participants have a clear understanding of what is expected of them and can prepare accordingly.
8.3. Offers opportunities for Q&A
Hackathon webinars offer opportunities for participants to ask questions and clarify any doubts they may have.
These live sessions can be called “AMA” (ask me anything) and help to ensure that any outstanding doubt about how to participate in the hackathon is solved.
They are usually hosted both by the hackathon organisers and the tool/services/processes experts.
8.4. Helps to build momentum
This type of live session can be called a “Hackathon kick-off” and it’s usually started by a high-profile stakeholder of the hackathon.
Using interactive polls to ask participants interesting questions such as “Where are you from” or “In how many hackathons have you participated so far” is always a good idea.
There are many tools out there that can help you create an engaging live session such as Zoom advanced polls and quizzes, Mentimeter, and Slido.
This will generate excitement and engagement among participants.
To sum up, organising hackathon webinars is an important component of organising a successful hackathon.
They provide important information, offer opportunities for Q&A, help to build momentum, provide a platform for networking, and improve the overall experience for participants.
9. Agree on a consistent evaluation process
Evaluating the ideas and projects that emerge from a hackathon can be challenging, especially if the criteria for evaluation are not clearly defined.
Here are some reasons why it's important to agree on consistent evaluation criteria while organising a hackathon:
9.1. Ensures fairness
Agreeing on consistent evaluation criteria ensures that all participants are evaluated based on the same standards.
This helps to ensure that the evaluation process is fair and unbiased.
It also helps to prevent any potential conflicts or disputes that may arise from inconsistencies in the evaluation process.
9.2. Provides clarity and guidance
Consistent evaluation criteria provide clarity to participants about what is expected of them.
This helps to ensure that everyone is on the same page and can work towards the desired hackathon outcome.
9.3. Improves the overall quality of solutions
Agreeing on consistent evaluation criteria ultimately improves the overall quality of solutions that emerge from the hackathon.
This is because participants are 100% sure of the specific criteria that their solutions will be evaluated against.
This leads to more focused and effective problem-solving, resulting in higher-quality solutions.
9.4. Enhances the event's credibility
Well-written, crystal clear, and highly defined evaluation criteria definitely create a trustworthiness aura around the event.
Potential participants reading quality evaluation criteria will have a higher perception of the event’s quality and will be more willing to register for the event.
So, agreeing on consistent evaluation criteria is an essential component of organising a successful hackathon.
It ensures fairness, provides clarity, improves the overall quality of solutions, and enhances the event’s credibility.
By defining clear and consistent evaluation criteria, you can create an authentic event that leads to solid solutions.
10. Rely on pro moderators for the winners' announcement
The final event of a hackathon, the winners' announcement, is a crucial part of the process that should be executed flawlessly.
One way to ensure a smooth and professional event is to hire experienced moderators to host the announcement.
Here are some reasons why it's important to hire pro moderators for the winners' announcement final event while organising a hackathon:
10.1. Expertise
Professional moderators have the expertise to handle the event smoothly and efficiently.
They are skilled at engaging the audience, building excitement, and keeping the event on track.
They also have experience in handling unexpected situations that may arise during the event.
10.2. Professionalism
Professional moderators bring a level of professionalism to the event that may be difficult to achieve otherwise.
They are well-spoken, and articulate, and can represent the event and its sponsors in a positive light.
They can also handle any technical issues that may arise during the event.
10.3. Branding
The winners' announcement final event is an excellent opportunity to promote the hackathon's brand and sponsors and therefore make a good impression externally.
Additionally, professional moderators can help to reinforce the event's branding by incorporating branding elements into their hosting.
They can also work with sponsors to highlight their contributions to the event.
10.4. Engagement
Hiring pro moderators can help to engage the audience during the winners' announcement final event.
They can interact with the audience, build excitement, and make the event more enjoyable for everyone involved.
This helps to ensure that the event leaves a positive impression on participants and attendees.
In conclusion, hiring professional moderators for the winners' announcement final event is an important component of organising a successful hackathon.
They bring expertise, objectivity, professionalism, branding, and engagement to the event, which can help to ensure its success.
By investing in professional moderators, you can create a more engaging, exciting, and memorable event for everyone involved.
11. Build flawless hackathon Terms & Conditions
We know, legalese may not be your language.
But having clear and comprehensive terms and conditions for your hackathon is indisputable.
Bulletproof hackathon T&Cs will:
11.1. Protect the rights of the hackathon participants
Terms and conditions help to establish the rights and responsibilities of the hackathon participants, organisers, and stakeholders.
This ensures that the participants are aware of their rights, obligations, and limitations during the event, such as prohibiting the participation of EU embargo countries’s citizens.
11.2. Ensure fairness, impartiality, and transparency
Terms and conditions explicitly spell out the whole hackathon process, which helps ensure fair, smooth, and impartial hackathon participation.
11.3. Limit liability
Terms and conditions can help to limit the liability of the hackathon organisers and stakeholders in case of any disputes or legal issues arising from the hackathon, including the prize delivery.
11.4. Define intellectual property boundaries
Terms and conditions can establish ownership and usage rights for any intellectual property created during the hackathon, including any software, code, or other materials. Furthermore, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 is often adopted during hackathons.
T&Cs are an important part of any hackathon as they help to protect the company's legal interests, ensure fairness and transparency, define intellectual property rights, and establish a clear agreement between the company and the participants.
12. Conclusion
Organising an online hackathon is a complex yet rewarding endeavour, and it requires careful planning and execution at every step of the process.
One-time hackathon organisers tend to underestimate the complexity of the task. A simple Google Form and some Slack channels won’t do the trick.
The key to success is to rely on hackathon experts’ services, capable of identifying the project dependencies and making sure all the hackathon organisation's best practices are correctly put in place.
Get in touch to organise your hackathon.