A “hackathon”, (composition from “hacking” + “marathon”), is a participatory activity of short duration, where people come together to solve some particular real life problems (challenges), in a friendly and fairly competition.  It provides a space and a time for participants to make progress on problems, they are interested in and an opportunity to learn about specific topics (subject of the hack). Training workshops/lectures are a great parallel track especially for newcomers and for all participants.

“Hacking” is a creative problem solving, overcoming the common rules established (innovation process), with a short but incessant effort (2-3 days, nights included). The problem field could be less/more challenging in relation to the innovation target and not necessarily involving technology (but in  most  cases technology is one of the enablers  for participants). The activity is typically made through the involvement, physically and/or virtually, of many quite skilled participants (“hackers”) that could be students, professionals, researchers.

It is possible to involve as many participants as you want, but it is important to consider also the logistics, the involved costs and the final participant experience, as well as the output results that are constituted, by the innovation ideas presented  and developed. Upon experience, around 40 participants, is a very good number. A 100-150 is a great number, but could be quite complicating to manage the overall process and requires more staff and budget.

Participants typically form groups of  3-5 individuals, take out their laptops (if the event is technology themed) and dive into problems with enthusiasm, competing “playfully” between them.

Running a good hackathon is costly: rooms, foods, beverage, and the prizes are the minimum resources required.  A professional hackathon, for about 50-60 participants costs about 10k€ overall. Part or the entire cost could be covered by local partners and sponsors. In general, it requires the following resources:

• Management: Establishment of an organizational committee that is representatives of several different regional stakeholders and define a leader partner that is able to manage the hackathon project as lead partner (could be an association that is sharing the same target groups of the hackathon)

The process to organize and execute a successfully hackathon could slightly change in relation to its duration in time, type and matter of problems/challenges focused and target groups involved.

It is important to point out that it is difficult to solve completely problems/challenges by the end of the hackathon. It is normal, real life problem are complex and  could not be addressed in few days only, but an operational PoC (Proof of Concept) could be made by brilliant teams, and provide innovative application of knowledge and technologies available in real cases. These PoCs could be perhaps evolved in the weeks after the hackathon, by some off line activities,  or by the direct interest of stakeholders.  The hackathon is usually just one action on a longer list of actions required to address a larger problem (e.g. innovate through digitalization the public administration), but could be even a training session to prepare participants for solving problems or create innovation in certain field.

In general it requires the following resources:

• Define the objective and target groups of the hackathon
• Establish an organizational committee that is representatives of several different regional stakeholders and define a leader partner that is able to manage the hackathon project as lead partner (could be an association that is sharing the same target groups of the hackathon)
• Find available sponsors (from stakeholders group and local business) and define if the event could be free for participants;
• Define tasks, responsibilities and duties, and so the budget required and how it will be covered.

FACILITATOR

The event requires a main facilitator and a team of tutors. The main facilitator is front ending the participants, explaining in a detailed way the agenda of the hackathon and keeping the time in order, to be in schedule and also keeps it aligned with other hackathons running in other geographical places (in case of a multi-site hackathon).

PURPOSE

It is important to define a  purpose of the hackathon. Should be challenging but also feasible in a 2-3 days effort  and/or with a longer effort. The hackathon is a very powerful instrument to broadly test newly resources made available, like new datasets published in open data, or new software released by a specific project (e.g a public software platform that could enable innovation) or a freely available resource that is not used yet a lot (e.g. chatbot development framework), or focusing an entire scientific field where there is potential (e.g. data, software and methods that could address climate change). Even if the resource available focused could be different, purpose of the hackathon is always to enable a nice situation where it is possible the creation of PoC and conceptual solutions made available for everyone (so results should be open sourced if possible).

The hackathon could be organized differently and having different results considering two different timeline that could be associated with prize and communication.

• Fast Rabbit: designed to enhance the projects that are completed during the 2-3 days of the hack
• Wise Turtle: the second is designed to enhance the teams that choose to continue developing in the weeks following hackathon, to undertake more complex projects without constraint them in the 2-3 days of the hack (1 months is a common time frame)

The main phases of the realization of an hackathon are:

Step 1:  Planning (do we have the resources? Rules and format)

The hackathon is all about open innovation. So everything should be documented with photos, videos, in particular shooting also small interview to participants, that could in that way explain why they enjoyed to stay there (to attract other participants for future hacks).

For any kind of hackathon, not only for the technologically focused one, there are several freely available platform of the web, that could be used to share results and make communication in easy and effective ways:

• Plan the hack with the aim to make something unique, with some peculiar details that could distinct the hack among all the other hacks (even if not directly related with the main hack, but more glamorous or attractive, or connect the hack with bigger dimension)
• Involve genuinely the civil society through local associations, SMEs and Cooperation
• Open event to citizens even if just as observers or simply as a curious spectator.
• Build momentum and assess/explain skills required to participants with preliminary training sessions

https://hackathon.guide
https://guide.mlh.io/
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Hackathons/Timeline