Zen and the Art of the Hackathon: Organizing Hackathons in the Philippines. My presentation at Geeks on a Beach, Sept 27, 2013, Boracay Island, Philippines.

1. Zen and the Art of the Hackathon
27 Sep 2013 / Geeks on a Beach / Jim Ayson
Organizing Hackathons in the Philippines

3. Some Stuff About Me
Where to find me:
Twitter & Instagram @jimayson
Facebook.com/jimayson
Facebook.com/groups/smartdevnet
Senior Manager, Partner Management, SMART
Covers Technology Partnerships, Content Provider (CP)
Management, Developer Relations, and Music Partnerships
(Indie Artist Program)
Founder, head honcho, community manager guy

4. Standard Disclaimer
Many images for this presentation were copied from the
web. Copyright belongs to the creators. No copyright
infringement was intended.

5. Download this!
Download or view this
presentation online at:
http://slideshare.net/jimayson

6. Contents
• What is a hackathon?
• Why do Hackathons?
• How to organize a hackathon
• Basic recipe for a hackathon
• Hackathon promotion

7. What is a Hackathon?
• Traditional:
A developer competition where a challenge is presented,
teams build a software or hardware project (plan and develop
it), present it to judges, and a winner is adjudged, in 24-48
hours.

8. What is a Hackathon?
Non-Traditional:
An exercise in developing ideas or solutions to problems within a
very compressed time frame.

9. What a Hackathon Isn’t
• It is not a competition for Breaking and Entering into
systems. Not about “hacking into” websites.

10. Other terms for Hackathons:
• CodeCamp
• Codefest
• HackDay
• HackFest
• Or just plain
“Hack”

11. HACKING = all about building
• Credo in organizations like Facebook - “Hack” is everywhere
• Their campus address is 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park

12. Hacker Square

14. Origins!
• Started in 1999 –
Java One
Conference
• Challenge: write a
Java program for
the Palm V to
communicate with
other Palm users.

15. They just got bigger and bigger

16. Why do Hackathons?

17. Developer Outreach
• Hackathons are a key element in developer outreach
– “try before you buy”
• Promote technologies, and causes
• Skill-building for developers and startup teams

18. Facebook Hack

19. TechCrunch Disrupt HackathonTechCrunch Disrupt

21. AT&T Developer Summit

22. AngelHack Manila

23. Hacks = IDEAS

24. New uses for Hackathons
• Development Program Promotion
• Policy Promotion
• Urban Planning
• Marketing Ideas
• Startup Ideas

28. Basic Elements of Hackathons
… Or what we’ve learned from organizing hack events in the
Philippines

29. Start with the Concept:
What is the purpose of the
Hackathon?

30. Sample Themes:
• Use of an API
• Startup Ideas
• Music App Hackathon
• Agricultural
Applications
• Apps for Development
• Promotion of a cause
(social good)

31. Get Sponsors
to help out

32. Announce the Date Early

35. Do a Pre-Event
• Typicaly held one week before the major hack,
explains the rules, the challenge, the prizes.

36. Use tools like EventBrite.com for registration and ticket
sales

37. TIP: Most Events are FREE, but if
you want to control access to a
hack, charge a nominal
registration fee.

38. Promote thru
Social Media
(mainly Facebook
and Twitter)

39. Don’t forget the event hashtag!

40. But don’t forget the power of the press release

41. Other Tools: Hackathon.IO

44. Basic Elements of a Hackathon

45. Preliminary Talks

46. State the Rules for the Hack

47. Present The Hack Challenge(s)

48. Break up into Teams

49. Register the teams in Hackathon.io

50. Hackmasters and Mentors

52. The Hack
6, 9, 12, 24 hours of hacking!!

54. Food and
Entertainment
• Pizza
• Redbull
• Beer
• Full buffet meals
• Games
• The all-night music
playlist – is very
important!!

55. Pizza = king of
hacker food

56. We had
Lechon once!
(AngelHack
Manila)

57. Massages!

58. The Hackathon Judges

59. The Pitch = 3 to 1 minutes to pitch!

60. The Awards and Prizes

61. The Follow Through
• Advance to the global hack/competition
• Mentoring of the winning team
• Refine product so it becomes a commercial
product or service

62. SMART DevNet and how we use
Hackathons
• Promotion for
our developer
program
• Promotion for
our APIs and
Partner APIs
• Generate new
product ideas
• Build
community

63. Join us!
• Like us:
Facebook.com/SmartDevN
et
• Talk to us:
Facebook.com/groups/sma
rtdevnet
• Follow us:
twitter.com/smartdevnet

64. The End
Download this presentation from
http://slideshare.net/jimayson