HackMD
Hack:Org:X v.4
Scroll down to the Meetup Notes 👇👇
Dear champion of the good Hack,
Wow! Where did all those months go? <ahem /> It's been a longer while since the last Hack:Org:X session, and we hope you are still with us - still interested in connecting with your fellow Hackathon Organizers, Researchers & Fans.
💭 Our previous discussions have highlighted the many ways in which hackathons promote cooperation and collaboration in their participants - and how many opportunities we have to do the same across hackathon organizing teams.
Screenshot of Google Trends showing an uptick of interest in Hackathons.
🤗 You raised important questions about standards, interdisciplinarity, and ethics. We have been connecting 1:1 at other venues. We hoped to be able to continue the series of exchanges and share valuable retrospectives and ideas with you soon: and soon we will.
Screenshot of a particularly busy month with almost every weekend a hackathon on the SwissDevJobs calendar.
🎸 It's super awesome of SwissDevJobs / rockstar* to step in and host us for the next event. You should already have received a calendar invite for the evening of September 18 - if not, let us know. If you can't join us in person, please stay tuned for a virtual meeting to follow soon.
🦸 Please get in touch if you have hackathons to plan or announce, if you have questions to our experienced and committed practitioners, links or publications to share – your support is key as we get this off the ground.
Feel free to add any additional topics or projects, upcoming events you wish to share with a reply to this e-mail or directly on our Hack:Org:X v.4 challenge board.
With warm greetings
Liebe Grüsse an alle
Bien amicalement
Oleg & Roland
Upcoming hackathons:
- BärnHäckt (23-25.8)
- GLAMhack #10🎉 (5-7.9)
- Energy Data Hackdays (12-13.9)
- HackThePromise (27-29.9)
- BaselHack (1-3.11)
🗓️ … get in touch with yours!
See more on swissdevjobs and schoolofdata
Our notes from the previous events, documentation and projects can be found on our event platform: hackorgx.dribdat.cc
Notes
Hack:Org:X Meetup on 18.9.2024 at SwissDevJobs
HackZurich is missing on our calendar, seems like the "flair" is not there any more since the deal with Messe Schweiz (see media reports like Netzwoche 2024-06), but we hope it will be back next year. Look forward to a #herHACK nationwide campaign.
Visible trend towards smaller events on specific topics, with around 30 people joining niche hackathons. Being in Switzerland is the only criteria - we brainstorm some ways of encouraging organizers of such events to join our platform.
Take an internal CSS hackathon as a case study - the corporates are still interested. Switzerland offers a high quality platform for hackathons, Germany has more but only by a factor of 2, i.e. not proportional to the population.
What are the themes in the recruiting world? Open source tools and tech stacks predominate, solutions developed cheaply offshore like in Poland. However, more and more authorities and NGOs/associations and RAV are looking for developers. Junior positions are all free. It costs 390.- per month to put a listing on our job board. Typically we see 2 years between job changes - at Rockstar, we have a different perspective.
BaselHack https://www.baselhack.ch/
How often do we meet in advance
Interesting and successful story
120 participants, limits have to be set
City vs. country - Memox is a super cool new location
From Eventfrog to a fully integrated system
Challenges suggested by participants
Sponsor Challenges are the first 5
Is now also on Discord
Children @ Hackathons
Youth Hacks Zurich, Lucerne
Childcare at MakeZurich
We should also support the next generations
I remember Hackéspace https://meta.dribdat.cc/project/123
EWZ digitization, IT, Smart City, innovation projects
MakeZurich - city administration together with hacker community
Creating things that you can touch
Looking for new solutions to the city's problems
- Concrete challenges 2) Networking, opposing people
Both can learn something from each other
Something good for the city - Climathon is also taking place in November
Getting new and exciting challenges from the administration is not easy - motivating and supporting people is a problem
The average age is increasing, we need to get more young people on board
Retrospectives!
What happens after the hackathon? https://hackorgx.dribdat.cc/project/27
We had 3 challenges to MakeZurich to save energy
The idea of heating trams was accepted but not further supported
To actually implement it in practice takes a lot!
Project that continued for people in wheelchairs - Accessible Universities
It was very important for the person concerned in the team
Thanks to a newly learned framework, the project was a springboard: found a new job
After hackathons I always have a list of things I should learn
Hackathons need success stories! We want to write about them
E.g. https://unita.co/blog/startup-hackathon-events/
Financing concepts https://hackorgx.dribdat.cc/project/32
At BaselHack we only collect place of residence for statistics
We promise no contact with participants to sponsors
Metrics created from further discussion
With team-based goal setting, e.g. sponsorship
An organization like HTZ or Swissgrid can set rules of conduct
It would be exciting to share as a marketing campaign on social media!
Introducing hackathons https://hackorgx.dribdat.cc/project/28
Volkshochschulen https://www.vhs-nrw.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Hackathons.pdf
Swiss Hackathon Cookbook https://meta.dribdat.cc/event/start
The biggest item is work that is unpaid
If we were to calculate the full costs, it would be 3x more expensive
Anything that saves effort is worth a lot of money
Further inspiration for our events: community champion meetups like the recent Black Python Devs Leadership Summit.
