An Expandable Explanation into Hackathon Organizing
By @sampoder
Tuesday, 13th December
As a :hackathon organizer, there’s always
hundreds of different things on your plate. As I was organizing
:Assemble, I
wrote in my
journal:
I've got 500 things in “the back of my head”. I just keep
stuffing things to do back there! Running a hackathon, there’s no
one telling you what to do and when to do it like there is in
school. Now that’s great and all, but it means I’m stressing about
forgetting things and feel like absolute chaos all day every day.
Organising Epoch was even more
chaotic, as shown in this BTS video:
Anyhow! The goal of this post is help you cover the basics of your hackathon –
food, venue, sponsorship etc. – and give you more time to focus on
making the experience unique and magical.
👋🏼 Starting Out 👋🏼
Getting going can be a daunting task, you’re priority in the first few
days of organizing a hackathon should be getting yourself setup to be
successful.
The Three Ws
You’ve probably heard of the four Ws before: who, what, when and why? At
the moment, don’t worry about the what, just ask yourself:
To help get the ball rolling, nail down these tasks in the first few
days:
Form a team of up-to five fellow organizers. Approach friends
and acquaintances who’d share your excitement and passion for your
event. Set yourself up with a group chat and a shared to-do list.
Avoid creating too big of a team, the
:law of diminishing returns comes
into play here.
Settle on a name. Names can be controversial within teams,
settle on one and stick to it. In my opinion, a good name can be said
in one breath, it’s easy to identify what it is & where it is from
it and is unique.
Great examples of names include: Windy City Hacks, RockHacks and
Beantown Bash.
Don’t overthink the name, though, it doesn’t make too much of a
difference to the event in the end.
Create a :HCB account:
the best tool for raising and spending money as you organize.
Set your team up with Google Workspace (to use Gmail with custom
domains, Drive etc.) accounts, all for free with HCB.
Claim a free domain for your hackathon from HCB’s promotions tab.
Join the #hackathon-organizers channel on the
:Hack Club Slack.
There you’ll be able get support from your fellow organizers with the
peculiar challenges a hackathon organizer faces.
Create a spreadsheet to keep track of your event’s finances. To
get a sense of where you’ll be spending money, check out Assemble’s
budget. If you’re looking for a budget template,
here’s the template I normally use (based on MLH’s).
Create a basic website with: your hackathon’s name, a two-line
description of a hackathon, a form to register interest (don’t
over-engineer it, an Airtable Form or Google Form will suffice) and
approximate dates.
Aim for appealing, though minimalistic, design. You want this
website up and running ASAP.
You’ll be able to build a more substantial website with more time,
but don’t let that hold you back from starting an online presence.
Once you do,
@lachlanjc has
:a fabulous guide
on creating one.
📍 Finding a Venue 📍
Setting off to find a venue is one hell of an adventure, it’ll lead you
to all sorts of places but in the end you will find one.
To get going, try your hand at the following:
Draft a two paragraph email that pitches your hackathon to prospective
venues. Cover the basics, who, what, when & why, in a succinct
manner. Here’s the email we used
:for Assemble &
:for Lion City Hacks.
Create a list of twenty spaces in your area that could serve as
venues. Don’t be afraid to think outside of the box, most spaces can
be
:converted into a hackathon venue from
stadiums to cinemas!
At this stage, also consider if you know anyone who could help you
with a venue or has a friend who could. Take advantage of any
connection you have, who know where it could lead.
Look around, where are the other tech events in your city being
hosted? Browse meetup.com to see
if there are any common venues and add them to your list.
Ideally, your venue will have: a large room for ceremonies,
smaller rooms for workshops, open space (with chairs, tables,
couches etc.) for hacking and a space to serve food.
Send your email to each space on your list. Do your best to
personalise it but don’t spend more than fifteen minutes on each.
Keep your eye on your inbox over the next couple of days. Don’t get
anything back? Send follow-ups and repeat the steps above. If your
emails aren’t working, get feedback from others (#hackathon-organizers
is a great place) and iterate on them.
Finding a venue is tough and stressful. Trust me, you’ll be able to make
it work. Just keep trying and don’t be afraid to try something crazy,
someone will say yes and all the work will pay off.
Once you have heard back from someone and they’re interested, jump on a
phone call to :iron out the details. And
you’re all set, well done on getting a venue secured and ready to go for
the day!
💸 Raising Money 💸
Hackathons need money and as we all know, money doesn’t grow on trees.
Instead, hackathon organizers raise money through sponsorships from
local businesses, startups and larger technology corporations.
Lion City Hacks's transparent finances on HCB.
Assuming you’ve got
:HCB setup (apply
if you haven’t!), the first step of this sponsorship process is to
create a :prospectus.
Here are a couple of great examples. As always take inspiration from
them, but, don’t copy them verbatim, your event is unique!
Once you’ve got a :prospectus, the process is
similar to finding venues: draft a meaningful email, create a list of
folks to reach out to, send them emails as personalised as possible and
then follow up / repeat the process.
Expect it to take a while for money to show up in your account,
likely weeks but maybe months. As I said earlier just keep trying and
once you’ve lined up sponsorships, make sure to express your
:full appreciation (sponsors love
photos!).
🔓 Legal & Safety
Collecting waivers and drafting safety policies isn't as fun as the
rest of the organizing process. However, in the unlikely case of a
problem, doing so now will help you a lot down the track.
📝 Waivers
To send out waivers and media releases (you’ll need these to stop
yourself from getting sued and so you can take photos), set yourself up
on a platform such as
DocuSign and use
Hack Club’s pre-drafted legal form. Two weeks before, send out waivers to participants and their parents.
Keep track of those who sign wherever you’re storing registrations (Airtable
is my personal recommendation).
🧸 Code of Conduct
You’ll want to adopt a code of conduct to ensure all your attendees feel
safe, comfortable and supported. I recommend forking
:Hack Club’s Code of Conduct,
adapting it your needs (eg. change out the reporting method) and then
publishing it on your website. Make the CoC visible in your opening
ceremony and make sure your attendees know who to go to if they don’t
feel comfortable.
🦠 COVID-19
With COVID-19 still spreading, draft out a set of guidelines for how
you’ll be reducing spread during your event to reassure and protect
attendees.
:Assemble’s is open-sourced, as are
many others on the internet. Fork one and adapt it to suit your needs
and your region’s ongoing regulations / recommendations.
Prepare for the unexpected, so if something goes wrong, you can handle
the situation and ensure everyone attending is safe.
📦 Stocking Your Event 📦
Ok… back to the fun stuff! Shopping! Some of you may find that fun,
normally I wouldn’t, but shopping for a hackathon is amazing.
🛠 Supplies
A hackathon needs a lot of supplies, for example plates to serve food on
and Arduino boards for workshops. I recommend creating a
procurement sheet
with everything you need and where you’ll buy it. Then go out with your
:HCB
card and buy it! Don’t know what to buy? You can take inspiration from
the supplies we brought at Assemble.
🌯 Food
Food is where you’re going to be spending most of your cash. Do your
best to cover each major meal (breakfast, lunch & dinner) and
provide snacks and drinks at anytime.
For lunch and dinner, try to spend $10 and $12 respectively per person.
Work with both local restaurants (preferable, but slightly harder) and
chain restaurants to find the best food within your budget. If you can
get a restaurant to sponsor a meal that’s great, though difficult.
For breakfast, snacks and drinks, head to a nearby Costco (or the local
alternative) and buy a bunch of items in bulk. Bagels, muffins and
cereal all work for breakfast. I’d buy around 300ml of beverage per
person per large meal being served and one snack per person for every
four hours of your hackathon.
✨ Swag
I’d encourage you to get creative and make the swag at your event
unique, that said, finding supplies for swag can be a challenge. I
highly recommend StickerMule, they’re slightly expensive but reliably
deliver high quality swag. They also have
hackathon sponsorship options. From friends I’ve also heard good things about
SmartyPass,
BrandMakers
and StickerHD.
📢 Marketing Your Event 📢
Every hackathon needs attendees, you could have 15 attendees, 50
attendees or 175+ attendees. I've run hackathons with each of these
attendee counts. Larger isn’t always better. Small hackathons, when done
right, can be incredibly special for both attendees and organizers. As
you start to market, set yourself a target for how many attendees you’d
like at your event.
Marketing is then, essentially, trial and error. Try
:different methods
of getting your hackathon in front of prospective attendees. Ask
yourself, if someone wanted to market an event to me, how would they
reach me? The answer to that question is most likely the marketing
strategy you should be pursuing.
Around 50% of people who register will show up on the day, keep that in
mind as you plan out numbers.
🤝 Leading A Team 🤝
By far and away the toughest part of organizing a hackathon a team.
Everyone’s counting on you and the buck stops with you. At the same
time, somehow you’ve got to keep track of everything.
Here’s what I’d recommend, based on what I’ve found works and what I’ve
previously failed to do (we’re all learning!):
Delegate the tasks and have faith in your team to get them done at a
high quality. Help them improve through kind feedback and
collaboration, don’t try to take everything on yourself.
Be clear and purposeful with your communication. Think through what
you say and make sure it’s achieving what you want it to achieve.
Show your appreciation for your team from day one all the way to the
end. Shout them out and compliment them when they do great stuff.
Be caring and empathetic, you’re all high schoolers, make sure to put
yourself in their shoes and help from there.
Get everyone around the table as frequently as possible to discuss the
event and give each other updates. If possible, setup a weekly meeting
with the whole team. This will help with accountability as well as
clarity, for yourself and your team.
Leading has been a personal struggle of mine for years. Remain authentic
and kind, never stop learning / improving, and set an example for your
team. With those three characteristics, you’ll do amazing.
🌟 A Smooth Day-of 🌟
You’ve done the hard yards and you’re finally here. Congratulations, now
let’s make this day run as smooth as possible so you and your attendees
can have a great time.
📜 Run of Show
A run of show is a breakdown of your event in fifteen or thirty minute
blocks. What’s happening when?
Here is Assemble’s
to base yours off.
Creating a Run of Show helps with two things:
Visualising your event and spotting flaws in your current plan.
Creating the document forces you to think everything. It’s best to
spot flaws before the day instead of as they happen!
Knowing what you’ve got to do at every moment of the event, as it
plays out. The same applies to your team, an RoS helps them know
what they’ve got to do. Just make sure to communicate the RoS
clearly to your team.
🐝 Team Delegation & Communication
You’ll also want to make sure that everyone knows what they’re going to
be doing on the day. Don’t pile everything on yourself, spread the load
out. You’ll enjoy the event more if you get an opportunity to chat with
all of your fabulous attendees.
For larger events or events with larger venues, set up a threaded Slack
or Discord channel to communicate with your team. WhatsApp can also work
if your team is small. Some friends swear by walkie-talkies, you may
want to try those out but be warned of long term hearing loss.
🪄 Creating a Magical Experience 🪄
You’ve got the basics covered, now go make this hackathon amazing. The
best hackathons aren’t copied from a template but instead carefully
crafted by the organizers, I’ll spare you of a lecture on my views on
what makes a great hackathon, instead, I leave you with a set of
questions to use as you plan out your event. If you’re looking for
inspiration, check out Assemble’s
open source writeup.
:Judging: How will judging work? Who will be judging? What criteria will
those judging use?
:Theme: Will you have a theme? How restrictive will the theme be? Who
chooses the theme? And in many cases, what is the theme?
:Swag: What swag will you offer attendees? Stickers? Shirts? Socks?
:Ceremonies: How will open and close your event? What prizes will be available?
Who’ll be getting prizes?
That’s a lot, but if you break down and work through the list slowly,
things will begin to come together. As you do so, ask yourself: is this
something that I, as a high-schooler, would want to do?
From there, I’ll hand over the controls to you. Go forth and create
magic. I’m always around to help in
#hackathon-organizers on the
:Hack Club Slack, or through email:
sam@hackclub.com.
Best of luck & enjoy the process!
Hackathons
A hackathon is a social coding marathon where teenagers come together
to build projects in a short amount of time and share them with the
world.
Attendees
Consider whether your attendees will be high schoolers, middle
schoolers, university student etc. You can always have a combination
of these groups, though I wouldn’t try to include all three.
Consider how technical your attendees will be, this fact will play a
major role in shaping the event you deliver and how it’s marketed.
Why
Authentic motivation is the main ingredient of an amazing hackathon.
Without being too much of a downer, if you don’t deeply care about
your event and the story behind it, your hackathon likely won’t pan
out too well.
When
Consider when’s best for your target audience as well as yourself.
organizing a hackathon during exam week is tough, I say from
experience. Make sure to give yourself at least two months (ideally
three months) to prepare everything for the event.
Diminishing Returns
the benefits gained from a new team member will be smaller the more
team members you have.
HCB
HCB is financial software used by clubs, hackathons, and
student-organized nonprofits. We act as their backing financial and
legal entity, allowing you to leverage our 501(c)(3) nonprofit status
to receive donations and use our beautiful in-house software to manage
and spend their funds.
Learn more ➚
Hack Club Slack
The Hack Club Slack is the best place to be as a technical teenager on
the internet. Have a coding question? Looking for project feedback?
You’ll find some fabulous people to talk to in our global Slack
(Discord-style online groupchat) with 17,000+ members, active at all
hours.
Join the Slack ➚
Assemble Email
Subject: Bringing Together Hack Clubbers @ Figma SF?
Hey Dylan!
Sam & Belle, here, we work with Christina Asquith & Zach Latta
at Hack Club. Every summer Hack Club runs something special. In 2020,
we ran Summer of Making and
in 2021, we traveled across America on
The Hacker Zephyr. This year we want to combine Summer of Making’s scale / impact and
The Hacker Zephyr’s IRL magic at Assemble, Hack Club’s 2022 summer
event.
Assemble will bring together 150 high school hackers from around the
globe for a three-day magical hackathon in San Francisco this summer.
You can expect the traditional Hack Club antics and more. For example,
we’re looking at having a life-sized dinosaur robot (that hackers can
hack on over the event) rove the event! Not only will Assemble be a
magical hackathon, it’ll also set the gold standard for future
high-school hackathons. Our goal is to redesign the blueprint for
future hackathons: every component of Assemble will be open sourced
(similar to
The Hacker Zephyr repository) and carefully documented for future organizers to bring to their
own communities.
Assemble needs a home in San Francisco and we were wondering if Figma
could host us for a weekend (Friday 6:00pm to 12:30pm on Sunday) in
late July / early August at your office in SF?
I remember hearing about your rapping at the Figma Variety Show during
the Hack Club AMA, that’s the exact vibe we’re going for at Assemble!
Alongside the photos we’ve seen on social media and us all using Figma
on the regular, the Figma office is shaping up to be the perfect venue
for Assemble.
Thank you for considering our request and we look forward to hearing
from you! We would love to jump on a call to answer any questions or
iron out details.
Thanks,
Sam & Belle
Lion City Hacks Email
Subject: Bringing Together Teenage Hackers @ RedHat
Hey Harish,
Sam here, I'm a 17-year old student in Singapore. Last month I
organized
Assemble, the first in-person high school hackathon in San Francisco since
the start of the pandemic. My team & I brought together hundreds
of teenagers from 12 countries and 20+ US states for a magical
weekend. I was so inspired after coming home from the event, that
I've decided to organize a hackathon for teenagers here in
Singapore.
To make this happen, I've brought together a team of secondary
school & JC students passionate about technology and raised just
under $10,000 for the event. There's only one thing left to make
the event a reality, the venue and that's where I need your help.
I was wondering if you could help us find a way for RedHat to host us
for a Saturday (8:00am to 9:00pm) in late November / early December?
I'd love to jump on a call to answer any questions or discuss
details.Thank you for considering my ask!
Thanks,
Sam
CodeDay Venue
We hosted CodeDay Singapore in a retro cinema (that was formerly a
disco dance floor), for example!
Venue Details
Ensure they have everything you’ll need for the event. WiFi, power
ports and a projector are the main ones. You may also want a speaker
and a microphone. If they don’t have something, you can always
improvise.
Check if there are any weird quirks about their office. Building
security systems can be incredibly frustrating, make sure you
understand how your venue’s security works.
Book the venue for the event’s entire length plus three to four
hours for setup and teardown.
Set expectations for your venue so there are no surprises on the
day. Minors and staying overnight are normally the biggest surprises
for venues, make your event incredibly clear for your point of
contact.
Prospectus
In layman’s terms, a two-three page document that tells the story
behind your hackathon, why one should sponsor your event and lastly,
how they can.
Assemble Thank You
After Assemble, we did the following to thank Figma for the kindness:
Left 🍫 custom chocolates in the office for our direct point of
contacts at Figma.
Placed
custom coasters in the
office for Figmates to use for their everyday coffee/tea.
Hosted a retrospective meeting with our point of contacts at Figma
to thank them & reflect on the event.
In general, after the event, make sure to show your venue just how
much you appreciate them!
Hack Club's community includes people from many different
backgrounds. The Hack Club contributors are committed to providing a
friendly, safe, and welcoming environment for all, regardless of age,
disability, gender, nationality, race, religion, sexuality, or similar
personal characteristic.
The first goal of the Code of Conduct is to specify a baseline
standard of behavior so that people with different social values and
communication styles can communicate effectively, productively, and
respectfully.
The second goal is to provide a mechanism for resolving conflicts in
the community when they arise.
The third goal of the Code of Conduct is to make our community
welcoming to people from different backgrounds. Diversity is critical
in order for us to build a thriving community; for Hack Club to be
successful, it needs hackers from all backgrounds.
With that said, a healthy community must allow for disagreement and
debate. The Code of Conduct is not a mechanism for people to silence
others with whom they disagree.
Where does the Code of Conduct apply?
If you join in or contribute to the Hack Club ecosystem in any way,
you are encouraged to follow the Code of Conduct while doing so.
Explicit enforcement of the Code of Conduct applies to all official
online Hack Club groups, in-person meetings, and events including:
Other Hack Club groups (such as hackathons, conferences, meetups, and
other unofficial forums) are encouraged to adopt this Code of Conduct.
Those groups must provide their own moderators and/or working group
(see below).
Hacker Values
These are the values to which people in the Hack Club community should
aspire.
Be friendly and welcoming
Be patient
Remember that people have varying communication styles and that
not everyone is using their native language (meaning and tone
can be lost in translation).
Be thoughtful
Productive communication requires effort. Think about how your
words will be interpreted.
Remember that sometimes it is best to refrain entirely from
commenting.
Be respectful
In particular, respect differences of opinion.
Be charitable
Interpret the arguments of others in good faith, do not seek to
disagree.
When we do disagree, try to understand why.
Avoid destructive behavior:
Derailing: stay on topic; if you want to talk about something
else, start a new conversation.
Unconstructive criticism: don't merely condemn the current
state of affairs; offer—or at least solicit—suggestions as to
how things may be improved.
Snarking (pithy, unproductive, sniping comments)
Discussing potentially offensive or sensitive issues; this all
too often leads to unnecessary conflict.
Microaggressions: brief and commonplace verbal, behavioral, and
environmental indignities that communicate hostile, derogatory
or negative slights and insults to a person or group.
People are complicated. You should expect to be misunderstood and to
misunderstand others; when this inevitably occurs, resist the urge to
be defensive or assign blame. Try not to take offense where no offense
was intended. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Even if the intent
was to provoke, do not rise to it. It is the responsibility of
all parties to de-escalate conflict when it arises.
Unwelcome behavior
These actions are explicitly forbidden in Hack Club spaces:
Expressing or provoking:
insulting, demeaning, hateful, or threatening remarks;
discrimination based on age, nationality, race, (dis)ability,
gender (identity or expression), sexuality, religion, or similar
personal characteristic;
bullying or systematic harassment;
unwelcome sexual advances, including sexually explicit content.
Advertisement or recruitment for events, companies, organizations,
etc - unless specifically given permission by Hack Club HQ.
Posting spam-like content that disrupts the environment of the
community.
Moderation & Enforcement
Please understand that speech and actions have consequences, and
unacceptable behavior will not be tolerated. When you participate in
areas where the code of conduct applies, you should act in the spirit of the "Hacker values". If
you conduct yourself in a way that is explicitly forbidden by the Code
of Conduct, you will be warned and asked to stop, and your messages
may be removed by community moderators. Repeated offenses may result
in a temporary or permanent ban from the community.
On your first offense, you will receive a written notice from one of
our community moderators. Depending on the degree of the reported
behavior, you may be asked to apologize, either in public or
directly to the party that you have offended.
On a second offense, you will be temporarily removed from the
community. The period of the temporary ban may vary from 3 days to a
month, decided based on the seriousness of the reported behavior.
Please note that this ban
does not indicate that you are no longer welcomed in the
community
- it represents an official warning for your behavior.
On a third offense, you may be asked to leave the community. Your
account may be suspended for an indefinite amount of time, and you
may be publicly identified.
This procedure only serves as a general guideline for moderation &
enforcement of our community conduct. Under all circumstances, the
Working Group or Hack Club's staff members may take any action we
deem appropriate, including immediate removal from the community.
Being banned from the Hack Club community may also prevent you from
participating in our community events, including but not restricted
to: local club meetings, hackathons, or challenges.
Please understand that we will not restrict your ability to contact
the
Code of Conduct working group under any
circumstance. If you have any questions or concerns about our
decision, please reach out to us directly. If your Slack account is
under suspension, email us directly at
conduct@hackclub.com.
Working Group
The Working Group is responsible for handling conduct-related issues.
Their mission is to de-escalate conflicts and try to resolve issues to
the satisfaction of all parties. For all
projects related to and/or maintained by Hack Club HQ, the Working Group is made up of the
Hack Club staff team and
Community team. The specific team member(s) handling each violation depend on the
location and nature of the issue.
Reporting Issues
If you encounter a conduct-related issue, you should report it to the
Working Group using the process described below.
Do not post about the issue publicly or try to rally
sentiment against a particular individual or group.
Reports are confidential within the Working Group.
Should you choose to remain anonymous then the Working Group
cannot notify you of the outcome of your report.
You may contact a member of the group directly if you do not
feel comfortable contacting the group as a whole. That member
will then raise the issue with the Working Group as a whole,
preserving the privacy of the reporter (if desired).
If your report concerns a member of the Working Group they will
be recused from Working Group discussions of the report.
The Working Group will strive to handle reports with discretion
and sensitivity, to protect the privacy of the involved parties,
and to avoid conflicts of interest.
You should receive a response within 48 hours (likely sooner).
(Should you choose to contact a single Working Group member, it may
take longer to receive a response.)
The Working Group will meet to review the incident and determine
what happened.
With the permission of person reporting the incident, the
Working Group may reach out to other community members for more
context.
The Working Group will reach a decision as to how to act. These
may include:
Nothing.
A request for a private or public apology.
A private or public warning.
An imposed vacation (for instance, asking someone to abstain
for a week from the Slack or a GitHub project).
A permanent or temporary ban from some or all Hack Club
spaces.
The Working Group will reach out to the original reporter to let
them know the decision.
Appeals to the decision may be made to the Working Group, or to any
of its members directly.
Note that the goal of the Code of Conduct and the Working Group is
to resolve conflicts in the most harmonious way possible.
We hope that in most cases issues may be resolved through polite
discussion and mutual agreement. Bannings and other forceful measures
are to be employed only as a last resort.
Changes to the Code of Conduct should be proposed by
creating an issue
or making a pull request to this document.
Acknowledgments
This was adapted from
Go's Code of Conduct. It is to be noted that many parts of Go's Code of Conduct are
adopted from the Code of Conduct documents of the Django, FreeBSD, and
Rust projects.
Below is the COVID-19 policy we adopted at Assemble. It was written
to keep attendees safe whilst also being practical enough for us to
implement. To the best of our knowledge (after contact tracing),
there was no COVID-19 transmission at Assemble.
Documentation and implementation is handled by the
COVID working group. If you have any questions, or
need to contact someone about these docs, please reach out to them.
Before the Hackathon
Vaccination Requirements
All attendees will be required to submit proof of full vaccination
including additional boosters that may become available and
recommended before August. Attendees may be asked to show proof at a
pre-event check-in and at the entrance of the venue, so
attendees should bring their proof of vaccination.
Covid Test Documentation
We require all attendees & organizers produce the results of a
negative antigen test within 24 hours of the event or (if flying)
before you leave to travel.
Travel Stipends
Recipients of travel stipends flying in to attend will need to take
their tests before boarding their plane.
At the Hackathon
Resources
Rapid tests will be provided in the open for anyone to use and hand
sanitizer will be located throughout the venue.
Masks are not required at the venue, but will be available for anyone
who wishes to wear one.
Self-report Response
If an attendee or organizer begins to show symptoms and/or has a
positive test, they must isolate and leave the event. They are
responsible for coordinating housing and rebooking travel if needed.
We will send a notification email to attendees with exposure details
if there is a positive test.
After the Hackathon
Reporting post-event positive-tests
If an attendee or organizer has a positive test within 7 days of the
event, they should report the possible exposure to
self-report link.
To ensure attendees and organizers remember to self-report after the
event, a scheduled text message will be sent with the
self-report link.
Marketing Methods
Some common strategies used are:
Emailing nearby school teachers personally. Teachers are often the
most direct method of reaching teenagers, though your mileage may
vary. Reaching out to them is a lot like pitching to venues and
sponsors, if things aren’t working, iterate on your email.
Posting in groups on Reddit, Telegram, Facebook , NextDoor etc.
Places where teenagers frequent are preferable. Though, parents can
be another way to reach teenagers.
Getting onto hackathon directories, such as hackathons.hackclub.com.
This will help folks already interested in hackathons find your
event.
On a similar note, check your website’s SEO and make sure your
showing up for the query “[city / region name] high school
hackathon”.
