Hackathon ramblings

--- tags: dribdat --- Hackathon ramblings === _In a completely random order. Sorry. :)_ https://www.devsurvival.com/my-love-and-hate-relationship-with-hackathons/ the nature of a hackthon to challenge your critical thinking and creativity really helps you to think of new ideas. ... The internet is your oyster. Think of a hackathon as an audition for programmers. ... admission is typically free. The only thing you pay is time, passion, and maybe a little dignity. Many projects fall through because they could not accommodate a roadblock or a nasty bug. --- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22994194 The code that results from this madness is not better than Hackathon code, just bad in a different way. If anything, my last Hackathon has made me aware of how much I want to work for an effective company at some point in my life, so I guess it was worthwhile. --- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22993099 A hackaton can be a fun excuse to experiment with random, but when I learned about the pan european hackaton against the corona virus organised by the EU commission I didn't know if I should to laugh or cry. Its like children playing doctor --- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22994065 Original idea: "OpenBSD's apparent first use of the term referred to a cryptographic development event held in Calgary on June 4, 1999." In the current corporate "open" source world the term has been stolen and is little more than a marketing buzzword. --- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5305332 asveikau on Mar 1, 2013 [-] I remember the first time I heard the word "hackathon" was in the context of OpenBSD. The folks that worked on that were geographically distributed throughout the world, and approximately once per year they'd meet in a hotel in Canada and have their one chance to work collaboratively in person instead of over email. It sounded cool. I don't remember when I first heard the Bay Area usage of the word "hackathon", but it sounded decidedly less cool. --- https://dev.to/jep/comment/nb9g I do have one question, is it normal to discuss your idea while working on it? My first instinct is to "protect" the idea and wait for the MVP/final product to reveal what you've been working on to maintain an advantage, but is that maybe the wrong perspective to have in an event like a hackathon? --- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5303385 nthnb on Mar 1, 2013 [-] Hackathons are just a formalization of what we already do when we're building something we care about. Everyone should take care of themselves but if you care deeply about something and want to change the world, hacking all night once in a while can be invigorating. --- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5303481 TeMPOraL on Mar 1, 2013 [-] Part of the confusion here is that, I think, people treat different kind of hackatons differently. I took part in 48-hour coding contests long before they were even called 'hackatons' (back then we called them Jams). Those are some of the best coding experiences in my life. Working in small teams on something fun and creative with tight deadline was absolutely exhilarating and reinvigorating. But there's one caveat. We did this _by ourselves, for ourselves_. For fun. What I personally strongly dislike are the 'company hackatons', in which developers from a company are basically tricked to do some unpaid work for the company. In my opinion, it's dishonest. You can feel the difference in the air - events that are created by the dev community for themselves to play and improve just smell different than the ones started by managers. So for me, the problem with hackatons boils down to the problem of "fun" vs. "work". Things started as fun, but they seem to be turning more and more into work. Just like in case of SEO and the Web, it's all great until someone from outside comes who wants to profit on this, and this is why we can't have nice things. --- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3610264 tworats on Feb 19, 2012 [-] Hackathons are the opposite of "how marketing people think software is made". They are the essence of the process of development with the decoration removed. Dave must not have been to a good hackathon. I've personally been involved in hackatons where we created what went on to become a commercial product in under a day. The code written during the hackathon may not have been part of the final product, but the creation of the product (what it is, what it does, even much of how it looks) was the result of the hackathon. I have the diametrically opposite view of Dave in this case - hackathons are exactly the tool needed to obviate the need for months of wrangling with "marketing people". Instead you can go directly to a tangible product that can be touched, tested, and discussed in a meaningful instead of abstract way. --- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3610192 geraldfong on Feb 19, 2012 [-] Hackathons are not meant to make production ready code, or even "elegant" code. It is meant to be a hack - a project where decisions are made in favor of speed or elegance. Hackathons don't generate code ready to ship, but that does not make it nonsense. They are meant to create "sketches" of programs. Sketches are created to convey an idea, and solidify the imagination. They are not the end product themselves or are they the basis for the end product. They are instead an aid. Similarly, whenever I hack and decide that I actually want to pursue the project, I start from scratch. The hack helps refine the design and architecture of the project much more than simply thinking about the project. disclosure: I'm an officer of the Hackers@Berkeley club in UC Berkeley. From what I've seen, hackathons are when students really step out of their comfort zones and learn new skills to create innovative projects. Great things have come out of them. Once in a while, those hacks even become the sketches for new startups. --- https://musicmachinery.com/2012/02/20/hackathons-are-not-nonsense/ Music Hack Days are not nonsense. They are incredibly creative weekends that have resulted in a 1,000 or more really awesome music hacks. Consider the hackathon to be the Haiku of programming. Instead of 17 syllables in 3 lines, a hacker has 24 hours. (Maybe we should call them Haikuthons;) I think the 24 hour constraint contributes to the creativity of the event. --- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8670215 binarymax on Nov 28, 2014 [-] I agree with some of these points and I understand why some folks don't like hackathons. I especially understand why some don't like company hackathons or PR hackathons. I go to about one or two of them per year, am 36 years old, and here's what I DO like about 'generic' hackathons - that have no single sponsor: - It's a break from my daily routine (I work from home, so its good to mingle) - It's a lot of fun and I meet smart like-minded people. - I get to laser focus on learning new tech without any emotional commitment. - I know it's all for naught so I have no problem starting something and then not feeling 'guilty' about throwing it away afterwards. - Its a serious mental challenge. I do it more for the personal competition (like golf) rather than competing against others There are several other reasons, but those are the top for me. I never going in expecting to win (and I never do), so treating it like a weekend of nonsense probably helps. --- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4002965 untog on May 21, 2012 [-] I attended a hackathon a little while ago that had an interesting cash arrangement (I'm not naming names as I signed an NDA, and in all honesty I am not sure what I can and cannot say). It was an invite-only event, and each team attending was paid $5,000. The winning team was paid $15,000. The company holding the hackathon owned the rights to any work done. I think this is a great arrangement. Developers get paid a reasonable sum for a weekend's worth of work, and the company holding the hackathon gets 7 or 8 app concepts pitched to them at the end of 48 hours. It probably costs them a lot less than getting one concept the traditional way. Cutting out the middleman, I suppose. To answer the post itself: I think it's all about visibility. I have discovered APIs through hackathon sponsors before that I have consequently used later on. Maybe one week later, maybe one year later. But it means they are on my radar. --- https://medium.com/hackathons-anonymous/hackathons-are-like-gyms-7ebcd6bfda26 You can work out at home, but the gym has the right environment, mentorship, and equipment to really get you started. At a hackathon, you are in the perfect environment to pick up something new really quickly — there’s tons of food, energy, and people with experience ready and willing to help get you off the ground. “Learning” to code is important, but at some point you really just have to get your hands dirty and build something. Want to get big? Plain and simple. Go to a hackathon. --- https://twitter.com/davefontenot/status/664558911828000768 @davefontenot Nov 11, 2015 You can't put a price on community. --- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2293779 Ask HN: What about taking Hackathons online? Living in a rural area I've never been to a hackathon or startup weekend. I realize those benefit massively from hackers being in one physical space with other fellow hackers, but I'm thinking about ways to take a hackathon online without losing too much momentum. Having seen Minecraft's notch stream entire coding sessions live I wonder if this could be a viable solution. I looked into it, there are good ways to stream a desktop (or parts of it) via justin.tv, even on linux systems. Let's say we create a website that embends the desktops of all participants and their projects in a grid thus transporting some of this "woah, they're doing something, i should too" feeling. With regard to projects there are many possible ways to do it. One idea would be to make it a nonprofit hackathon where organizations could apply and teams or individual hackers could pick what they'd like (similar to random hacks of kindness), or just let startups do their own things. But first I'd like to know if the online hackathon idea is even remotely interesting. Would you share (parts of) your desktop live for such an event? Do you think it's possible to create a momentum this way? --- https://www.wolfram.com/hackathons/ In the Wolfram Cloud or on local hardware, the new Wolfram Language is the ultimate hackathon power tool. With its revolutionary approach of building as much as possible into the language—and automating programming and deployment—the Wolfram Language lets you take big ideas and turn them into reality in the space of a hackathon. Recent Notable Wins ... http://hackathon.guru/ Quickly generate ideas for your next project with the Wolfram Language Hackathon Project Generator, powered by the Wolfram Language and the Wolfram Cloud. --- https://medium.com/@_Guled_/hackathons-view-local-and-global-hackathons-media-kit-c91937c9e3c6#.z05w188t3 Think of it as the “tripadvisor” for hackathon events. With Hackathons, you can view upcoming events in an organized manner. The app organizes events into three categories: weekly, monthly, and yearly events. With a tap of a button you can view events happening this week or in the near future. https://www.producthunt.com/posts/hackathons Shlok Vaidya A list of hackathons is cool, and reviews of each is cool. But what would be interesting is the long run efficacy of each hackathon. How many teams turned into founding teams, how many people got jobs out of it, money raised, exits etc. A scorecard for each relevant metric. Guled Ahmed @shloky That wouldn't be hard to implement. A IMDb + Angellist type of implementation would be quite fun to implement. Thanks for the idea. Dan Feshbach @shloky Love this comment - We are building an autism tech incubator and have seen so much good will wasted but projects that don't finish - we are doing a small beta hackathon to test new approaches - would like to get your ideas --- https://www.fastcompany.com/3054023/why-hackathons-are-bad-for-innovation Hackathons are fun. They’re quasi-social opportunities to work on something important with smart, passionate people. For companies and universities, they represent quick, relatively inexpensive ways to encourage collaboration, produce new ideas, and generate publicity. But they very rarely spark real, lasting innovation. ... hackathons typically create a false sense of success. Every hackathon proclaims its winners and awards prizes. But what if none of the ideas are really any good? It tends not to matter. The top team still gets a check and the very fact that the organization hosted a hackathon ticks the innovation box. ... When things go wrong late in the game, bearers of bad news can be punished. Bad news itself can get buried. That’s all the more reason to combine a hacking mindset with rigorous examination of the data. This would reward smart failures and equip leaders with the information needed to rescale, pivot, or ax their projects at the right time. --- https://yourideasareterrible.com/about/ Your Ideas Are Terrible plans and executes corporate hackathons and corporate + startup collaboration programs. We believe that if you don’t approach every new idea with a high degree of humility – even to the extent of assuming your ideas are terrible – you lack the flexibility required to challenge your beliefs, examine evidence that might prove you wrong, and find the path from creating something mediocre to building something great. https://yourideasareterrible.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-corporate-hackathons/ Unfortunately, most corporate hackathons (>90%) generate negative ROI. That’s pretty wasteful. We hate waste. Large organizations hire us to remove the waste from their innovation process so they can discover, explore and launch new products faster and with fewer resources. One way we do this is designing and executing internal and external hackathons. https://yourideasareterrible.com/how-to-guarantee-an-innovation-project-team-will-fail/ To survive today’s business climate and its exponential rate of change, organizations can no longer practice the disastrous (and all-to-common) practice of placing big bets on a small number of ideas. It’s lazy and comfortable and risky. Innovation leaders must learn the art of rapid decision making. ... When nothing changes about a team’s plan, that’s when you should be concerned. Tell them you are worried that they aren’t digging deep enough and they are probably on a path to build something that customers don’t want. Tell them to focus on learning. Encourage them to act on what they learn and change the idea or kill it completely so that they can find their way from a good idea to the great idea. Challenge them to try as hard as they can to invalidate their assumptions (i.e. prove themselves wrong). When a team makes a concerted effort to gather evidence that they shouldn’t build a new product that will fail, that’s when they might be onto something truly interesting. https://yourideasareterrible.com/hyping-your-hackathon/ Keep a watchful eye on your registration list. Are enough people signing up? Are you attracting the right kind of people? The earlier you can catch things going sideways, the more time you have to build a new hit list and/or send a last minute push (with revamped social assets that reflect the urgency of the upcoming registration deadline). https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1A7dQAGB4v3JzzuD3VUQPkENUksgwqT84iuflFYqmwKU/edit#gid=0 The Ultimate Hackathon Budget Template Created by Your Ideas are Terrible, a corporate innovation consultancy focused on people, culture and process. Need help with your next corporate hackathon? Contact us New to hackathons and want to learn how? Check out our quickstart guide Should you host a hackathon? Here is an answer This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. --- https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/stay-focused-and-keep-hacking/10150842676418920 In Facebook’s early days, a lot of ordinary nights were like hackathons—when someone decided they wanted to stay up all night to build a prototype, they just did it. But as Facebook grew, people started organizing hackathons as a way to collaborate with colleagues from different parts of the team to get their ideas working fast. I had heard a lot about hackathons before I came to Facebook, and about a month after I joined in 2007, I asked another engineer when the next hackathon would be. He just said, “Whenever someone wants to organize it.” I immediately went to my desk and emailed the company that I was going to hack the following night and, if anyone else wanted to join me, I would get food and drinks. The following night, we had a great hackathon that generated lots of innovative projects and ideas. Zuck came to my desk the next day and told me how awesome the hackathon had been, and from then on I’ve been spreading the word. --- https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources/get-started-with-design Sometimes the best way to understand design is to just dive in and experience it! https://designthinking.ideo.com/resources/openideo OpenIDEO’s platform expands on the power of crowdsourcing, equipping participants with resources, connections, and design tools to create real impact, and draws from the process of design thinking to lead towards innovation. --- https://github.com/florinpop17/app-ideas Have you ever wanted to build something but you had no idea what to do? Just as authors sometimes have "writers block" it's also true for developers. This list is intended to solve this issue once and for all! +1 --- https://beza1e1.tuxen.de/companies_are_ai.html You can argue a lot what "intelligence" means. Then you can proceed arguing what is artificial and natural intelligence. If you understand "artificial" as "man-made" instead of "digital" then we already live among AIs for a long time. They have personal rights. They have a home address. They pay taxes. They are "companies". https://beza1e1.tuxen.de/mindstorms.html So the core insight I got from the book: Kids benefit from computers by having simulations (microworlds) where they can play (no predefined goals!) around with concepts. The challenge is to find or design the right simulation such that they have close relationships to concepts we want to teach.