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tags: bolt.fun
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# Virtual Hackathon Guide
# An Introduction to Virtual Hackathons
Virtual hackathons are online events where participants gather together to build products, or solve complex problems together. Usually following a specific theme or subject, hackathons are one of the most proven ways to incubate and build great ideas using a targetted technology or stack. At the end of the event, a selected panel of judges (usually industry experts) assess the projects entered and award prizes to the teams that build the most successful product or proof of concept. *As you'll read later, success is a relative term that you get to define as the event organiser.*

Over the past year, BOLT🔩FUN has hosted a number of different sized events that vary in subject, length, and target audience. Throughout those events, we managed to register > 800 makers to our platform, incubate 100+ projects and ideas, host 60+ workshops and discussions, and distribute over 3.5 BTC (~$65,000) in prizes - onboarding the next wave of bitcoin maker talent. Our most recent event, the Legends of Lightning tournament, was to this day the largest bitcoin hackathon ever run.

In this guide we will break down some of the key details, considerations, and modules you will need to know to run your own successful online hackathon event.

## Discover & incentivise your target audience
When running an online event, one of, if not THE most important aspect is who will be taking part. To state the obvious, hackathons don't run without participants. Make sure to put a lot of thought and energy into who you will target and sign up to your event. This effort will also greatly impact your marketing to registration success rate.

### Who will take part in my hackathon?
Hackathons are run for a number of different demographics, ranging in both skillsets and interests. Typically, hackathons tend to be run in industries like software development, however the approaches detailed in these guides could be applied to any industry.

*There are 3 things to bare in mind when it comes to setting your targetted audience & their outputs:*

**Volume**
Usually speaking, more participants = more teams and projects. If you're looking for greater breadth of products being built, try to get as many hackers on board as possible. However, more hackers can come with some downsides, such as a need for more or larger prizes, bigger overheads and judging workload, as well as an increase in participant monitoring and admin.

**Quality**
If you're looking for a small handful of high quality projects, target fewer makers but with more refined skillsets. You will have a smaller, but more rich, pool of talent to work with. The added benefit of this approach is the ability to closely monitor hackers and teams, coaching and mentoring them along the way.

**Goals & Outputs**
Before you run a virtual hackaton, it's good to think about your desired goals and outputs. In short, what do you want to achieve from this event? Hackathons are a lot of work and demand organisational effort and energy to run smoothly. So before you start marketing your event, start with your ideal endpoint and work backwards.

**Diversity**
If you'd like to develop a range of different ideas and projects, it might be worth thinking about the diversity of your hacker group. Different cultures, genders, and ideologies will bring a mixture of skillsets and mindsets to the table. Diversity should be encouraged and can even be incentivised through targetted advertising and prizes.

### Develop your hacker personas & marketing narratives
Once you have chosen your target audience, it's time to meet them where they are. We find it useful to develop pariticipant personas and empathy maps in order to get into your ideal participant's shoes. Think about it this way... "What would make you want to take part in a virtual hackathon? What benefits are there for you?".

Depending on who you target, you might want to change the narative and marketing of what your online event will provide. For example:

**Prizes & Financial Reward**
A huge driver of participation in virtual hackathons are the prizes on offer. Make sure you give adequate reward for hard work. If you invest in your participants, they will likely invest in you. Read more about how to consider setting prizes in our [Hackathon Prizes & Judging](https://) guide.

**Learning Opportunities**
A lot of hackers take part in virtual events to learn new skills or get introduced to novel tech stacks and specs. If you will be offering learning opportunities such as tutorials, workshops, and discussions, you should advertise it!

**Networking Opportunities**
Hackathons are a great way for participants to meet new people, team mates/co-founders, mentors, and employers and make connections within the industry. They may also meet other builders who they can make partnerships with, or use their tools.

If someone has been hired following an event you previously ran, this is marketing gold dust for others who may be looking for work.

*You can of course target multiple types of personas. Quite often, varying demographics and skillsets quite often lead to a more varied range of projects being built due to diverse mindsets, work processes, and experience.*

## Marketing your event
We are by no means marketing gurus. However, over the course of the last year we have learnt a handful of lessons, tips, and tricks when it comes to marketing your online event. This section will give you some ideas on how to refine your marketing approach and effectively reach your target audience.

**Create an event page or website**
This may seem like a no brainer, but you'd be surprised how many event organisers fail to create a clear and informative website that provides event details, schedules, speakers, judges, and prize information. What's more, make sure there is a clear call to action and path to participant registration. This doesn't have to be complex, it could even be a blog post with an email sign up form attached! Having a single place where participants can come to find details of your event will help save you time having to manually send information out once at a time.

**Create SEO friendly & marketable content**
When creating your website and marketing material, use keywords that will help show your event in Google searches. These include words like *"hackthon", "virtual", "digital", "event", "network", "professional", "industry", "workshop", "developer tutorials", "software", "bitcoin", "blockchain"*, and more. What's more, when it comes to your visual marketing material, make sure you create "sexy" (or visually apealing) content (images, posters, videos, etc) that makes your event stand out and easy to digest.

**Use emails & newsletters**
Whilst you can reach potential participants from all corners of the web, never underestimate the power of emails. If you already have a userbase and mailing list, market your event to them. If you are starting from scratch, collect emails during registration and create a newsletter to promote the key event details, prizes, and perks to increase participant turnover. You can also keep your audience engaged leading up to + throughout your event with regular emails to market workshops, tutorials, deadlines, and whatever other key info they need to know.

**Leverage social media platforms & paid ads**
Whilst you may not want to use paid ads, they are an effective way of placing your event in front of a target audience. This could be through selected social media channels or websites that have userbases showing a large portion of your target demographic (e.g developers, designers, etc). What's more (relating to point No.2), when using paid ads make sure your marketing material is visually attractive and easy to digest. Written or visual information that is too complex will fail to hit the mark and create good participant turnover.

**Get your event sponsors, speakers, and judges to spread the word**
If you're event has sponsors or co-sponsors, use them to help you promote their event. They will likely have budgets designated for event marketing and more often than not, two sets of hands are better than one. Additionally, if you're event has speakers and judges (often industry professionals), leverage their followings and social presence to help promote your event (or at least their own part in it) and gain further outreach. Their followings will not only likely match your target demographic, but will also help interested participants to discover and register for your event.

**Create referral schemes**
Word of mouth is an old school, powerful marketing tool. Get your hackers to spread the word and get their friends to sign up too. This could be through a referral programme, or even by encouraging professionals to sign up with their teams of colleagues.

**Create press releases and target relevant news websites/outlets**
Don't wait around for people to discover your event themselves, and certainly don't expect news outlets to write about it on their own accord. Make sure to prepare a press release and contact relevant websites and journalists to write about your event. Make sure all the details are clearly laid out, and provide branding and marketing assets (e.g logos, banners, #hashtags, etc) where necessary.

**Keep posting about your event**
In short, be consistent. Make sure you continue posting and marketing your event online and within the relevant social channels. It's common for people to scroll past your promoted ads or tweets about the event, but the more you put material out there, the more likely it is to eventually be discovered. When posting online, create and consistently use #hashtags to talk about your event. These are also useful for giving the impression that others are talking about your event, which is fun and exciting for participants. Finally, be consistent in the language and information you use. Don't repeat the same information 5 different ways, as it can become confusing. Make sure you stick to the plan and create clear, concise instructions on how to take part.

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# How to choose your hackathon event's length
How long will your hackathon be, and when will it be taking place? Clearly define the time periods and let participants know where they need to be and when, including talks, workshops, and submission deadlines.

Some factors to take into account when choosing the timeframe of your hackathon.
1. How many people do you have to provide mentorship?
2. Are you looking for people to learn about your stack, get a gentle introduction, generate proof of concepts, or create a long term project?
3. What level of skill do you want to attract primarily?

### Weekend Hackathons
**Focus:** Building MVPs / Features
**Timeframe:** 2-3 Days

Weekend hackathons are great first hackathon to put on. They are self contained and focus just on building products and software. There isn't much time (if any) to provide mentorship for newcommers, however these weekend long events are perfect for those who are already equiped with the skills and knowledge required to build great ideas.

Participants in weekend hackathons are likely to be industry professionals, experts, or extreme hobbyists with experience in the relevant technology stack or problem space.

| Pros ✅ | Cons ❌ |
| ------- | ------- |
| Fast paced | Limit to what can be built |
| Hands off | Less team building |
| Low cost | Unfinished projects |
| No onboarding | Less participants |

### Week Long Hackathons
**Focus:** Learning & Building MVPs / Features
**Timeframe:** 5-7 Days

Building on our weekend hackathons are our week long events. These hackathons give organisers and participants a few extra days to provide conference style events and workshops for the purpose of onboarding hackers into the space, becoming familiar with tech stacks, receiving mentorship, and more.

These longer events tend to be more friendly for newcommers or beginners, giving them a few extra days to get acquainted with the challenges at hand and how to solve them using relevent technologies. You can also provide more hands on support for team formation, idea generation, and mentorship through presentations, discussions, and workshops during the first few days.

You do not want to alienate folks which are more advanced in their knowledge in the content though - so a good strategy is to provide workshops, tutorials, and presentations that range in skill level and expertise throughout. For example, our #ShockTheWeb hackathons targetted web developers who were new to bitcoin, and did not know about how to build apps on the lightning network, however there were still advanced workshops suitable for developers who were already familiar with one or two codebases such as WebLN, LNURL, etc.

| Pros ✅ | Cons ❌ |
| ------- | ------- |
| More room for education & onboarding | More hands on |
| More time for quality work | Higher cost |
| Opportunity for more participants | Requires higher level of organisation |

### Month+ Hackathons (a.k.a Tournaments)
**Focus:** Learning & Building multi-feature Products
**Timeframe:** 6-12 Weeks

Our longest format events are called Tournaments, usually spanning a period of 8-10 weeks. These events are focused towards high quality onboarding, education, incubation and acceleration.

These events are suitable for all types of participants, from beginners to professionals alike. Structured into themed "accelerator" style weeks, participants get a chance to start from scratch, formulate teams, brainstorm ideas and learn how to build them, receive mentorship and feedback from industry experts, and finally figure out their project's next steps.

These events are much more time consuming for organisers, and require greater attention to detail and feedback for participants. The easiest way to think about running these events is hosting a startup incubator or accelerator for founders and technologists.

| Pros ✅ | Cons ❌ |
| ------- | ------- |
| More participants | Higher cost |
| Higher quality ideas + projects | ... |
| Lots of education + onboarding | ... |
| Checkins + Mentorship | Very hands on |

- Time to recruit quality talent and build great ideas
- Time to formulate ideas, business plans, and growth strategy
- Time to learn how to use multiple tech stacks and select which one best suits your project or team
- Time for close quarter mentorship, accountability, and checkins

## Helping onboard hackers
Hackers are often void of ideas. Most participants come to the event looking to team up, rather than building something around themselves.

Personas: Types of people who attend hackathons
1. Solo Dev with an idea
2. Team with an idea
3. Solo Dev who want to be part of the fun
4. willing to join a team
4. Someone with an idea but without the technical skills

- Idea generation
- Team formation
- Engagement
- How to keep participants engaged throughout the process
- Times of day (workshops, etc)
- Requirements (#BuildInPublic)

# Modules
These are some modules to help you build your event calendar. They are extremely important for driving participant engagement levels, education and onboarding, and success.
### Community / Satellite Events
These are events that are put on by different members of your community, including yourself. If you wish to reduce your event's overheads, we recommend providing information and branding assets to willing organisers to put on workshops, discussions, feedback sessions, and the like.
#### Twitter Spaces
Bitcoin Twitter is a place where a lot of discussion and outreach takes place. Think about organising online Twitter spaces that allow your participants to engage in open conversation. These are also good for public announcements, event details, etc.
#### Meetups
Encourage local bitcoin meetups to take place throughout your event. Think of these as miniature events inside of your own event. They could involve:
- Workshops
- Team forming & idea generation
- Discussions, Keynotes, and Talks
#### Conferences & Hackathons
For larger tournament style events, try to team up with other hackathon or conference organisers in order to cross promote your events. Your participants could learn from conference talks and workshops, or even take part in smaller weekend hackathons to help them form teams, generate ideas, incubate and accelerate their projects for the purpose of achieving a larger goal.

## Workshops / Tutorials
Onboarding makers is often the most challenging part of hackathons and online events. Not everyone is coming in at the same level of knowledge. The majority of participating hackers are bitcoin developers who build in their free time, designers, and project managers. To help them learn and accelerate their onboarding process into building successful products, host online workshops and events from industry professionals.

These can be focused around specific topics that match your event description (e.g Nostr), helping participants achieve your desired end goal or outcome. For example, if the goal of your event is to onboard 100 new developers into lightning web development, think about hosting workshops around topics like WebLN, LNURL, WebBTC, etc.

**Workshop/Tutorial Ideas**
1. Introduction to Bitcoin: What is it and how does it work?
2. Introduction to Bitcoin's Lightning Network
3. What are LSPs?
4. Boostrapping Lightning Node Infrastructure
- How to provide liquidity to your lightning web app
6. Stack Specific Intros, Tutorials, and Payments
- Introduction to WebLN
- Value4Value Payments & Online Economies
- Introduction to LNURL
- Introduction to Lightning Address
- Introduction to Taro
- Introduction to LNC-web
- Introduction to LSATs
7. Design workshops
- Using design sprints to map, decide, and sketch your hackathon's focus
- How to use the Bitcoin Design Guide
9. Growth Hacking Workshops
- Problem Definition & Value Proposition
- Product Market Fit & MVP
- Go-to-Market Strategy
- Branding & Marketing Strategy

#### Development
Something about why development workshops are important ...
Here is an [example of a development workshop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT9MiC5pQh8&t=2s).

#### Design
Something about why design workshops are important ...
Here is an [example of a design workshop](https://).

#### Growth Hacking
Growth hacking, or business development, is an essential piece of the product lifecycle. These workshops are particuarly important when trying to encourage teams to incubate their ideas beyond the concept phase.

Here is an [example of a growth hacking workshop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFLumZ_qIJA&list=PLTIjqo3gXzjkrYD3YgKkl2Snl1eKXCNTG)

Business development topics include:
- Problem Definition & Value Proposition
- Product Market Fit & MVP
- Go-to-Market Strategy
- Branding & Marketing Strategy

#### Funding Workshops
If your hackathon or event looks to encourage participants to form teams around longer-term, sustainable projects, we recommend providing some workshops on how to approach the aspect of funding. This could be through forms of private investment, such as equity or share ownership, VC funding, etc, or grants and crowd-funding. If the project will look to raise capital, it would be worthwhile to provide further information on company formation and incorporation.

### Mentorship
Throughout your event, participants will greatly benefit from close monitoring and mentorship. There are two approaches to this:

**1-to-1 Mentorship**
For each participating team, assign them with a hacking mentor who can be on hand to answer any event of product related questions. We recommend finding a suitable mentor that has relevant industry or product experience.

**Expert Mentorship**
Another approach is to have mentors who are experts in a particular area or field, available for Q+A from any team or participant.

**Group Mentorship**
Reducing the amount of contact hours mentors are required to have, this approach is especially useful when mentors have other commitments and/or aren't being compensated for their time. Mentors can be available for large group calls for 1 or 2 hours once per week. Hackathon participants can join a group call and form breakout rooms around certain topics or blockers that mentors can help with. These should be open to join.

#### Design Reviews
Design reviews enable teams to form a close relationship with a designer (or set of designers) in order to receive UI/UX feedback, formulate user journeys and flows, sketch wireframes, and more.

#### Code Reviews
Code reviews are particularly useful for development teams who are looking to optimise their codebase or unblock and issue.

#### Deal Rooms
Deal rooms are relevant for any teams that are looking to seek help or feedback from investors or VCs. Teams have 5 minutes to pitch their idea or show off their investment deck to investors, grantors, and VCs.

:::info
If you host your hackathon with us, being well connected with the top VCs, and accelerators in the space we would be able help funnel the top projects to them.
:::

## Prizes & Judging
When organising your event, you should think deeply about prizes. Prizes are a great way of incentivising participants to:
- Build great products
- Build products that are in line with your own event goals & outcome
- Market your event and attract quality talent

As a rule of thumb, bigger prizes don't always have a direct correlation to more participants. You should provide prizes that are appealing, howevever it could be worth reserving some capital for other perks and bonuses, such as free access to software, mentorship, and workshops.

**A quick warning** ⚠️
Do not under estimate the marketing and operations cost of running a hackathon. While the size of prizes are a great way to market a tournament it does not guarantee quality, or quantity of projects. Attracting engaged makers, knowledge sharing, mentoring, and providing other resources in a fun environment can have far bigger, and long term benefits for you. A noted problem in the wider tech industry with hackathons are that there are infact professional teams that only care about building to fit your criteria to get win prizes.

Prizes can be given in the form of:
- Money (Fiat or Bitcoin)
- Perks and Rewards (Merch, Memberships, Access to investor days, etc)
- Incentivise them through targeted bounties and prizes.
- Tracks can have generalised targets (adoption of technology X)
- Bounties can hone in on specific requirements and incentives

### Judging Criteria
#### Selecting Judges
##### Internal
If your hackathon is focused on your own product, or protocol where people in your company are the experts, you may decide to have judging be done by your own team.
##### External
Once you have the judging criteria set, and the schedule of the event finals (and semi-finals if applicable) you are ready to reach out to industry judges.
#### Process & Communication
### Distributing Prizes
## Media Assets
## FAQs