Literature on Time-Bounded Events

This is a working document motivated by Hacking and Making at Time-Bounded Events: Current Trends and Next Steps in Research and Event Design [hackathon-workshop-2018]. Questions from this workshop that motivated our reading include:

  • How do event goals vary across contexts and designs? How do we measure success in achieving these goals? How do we support more long-term outcomes, such as building a long-term community by fostering engagement?
  • How do we design tools, processes, and workflows that support organizers and community managers, such as instruments to evaluate outcomes and assess community needs?
  • How are computer-mediated communication and collaborative tools used in augmenting time-bounded collaborative events?
  • What collaboration structures support different event designs and outcomes?
  • What opportunities and challenges do these tools introduce?
  • How do we preserve group and work artefacts when we move from virtual to face-to-face spaces and vice versa?

We hope that the reading resources listed below could be of value to people who both attend and organize hackathons, and are interested in learning more about the different styles and frameworks of such events.

Join our discussion at DINAcon 2018! In pursuit of fair co-creation will be a workshop facilitated by Gonzalo Casas, Oleg Lavrovsky & Reto Wick based on some of this material on October 19 in Bern. See: workshop outline and notes

Please contact our interest group for more information, edit this document if you have something to add, visit this forum thread or our community chat channel (invite link), or write to info @ schoolofdata.ch - to join the discussion. The following people have contributed to this list so far:

Literature

Articles that paint the landscape and promote current research on the topic. Additional resources, news items or blog posts of interest, how-to's and handbooks for hackathon organizers, in rough chronological order, divided between generally neutral or critical, and generally positive viewpoints, as well as past or future events that are especially relevant to this discussion. Please mark ($) any articles which are not available under Open Access.

Criticism

Hackathons as Co-optation Ritual: Socializing Workers and Institutionalizing Innovation in the “New” Economy, Sharon Zukin et al. (2017) - Wired

From Hackathon to Production Tai Klein (2017)

Intransparent hackathons MedCityNews (2017)

This is Hackathon Harassment Kimberly K. (2017)

Hack for good: Speculative labour, app development and the
burden of austerity Gregg, M. (2015)

Hackathons and the making of entrepreneurial citizenship Irani, L. (2015)

Pitfalls of “Cooptation” Pablo Lapegna (2014)

Civic Hackathons: Innovation, Procurement, or Civic Engagement? Peter Johnson, Pamela Robinson (2014)

Coding freedom: The ethics and aesthetics of hacking Coleman, E. G. (2013)

Praise

Inclusive Making and Hacking (2018, GitHub)

  • An open education resource which focuses on the design aspects of making hackathons an excellent experience for a diverse participant base.

When Do Workshops Work? (2017)

  • A thoughtful piece, from people we respect, which could lead to a collaboration.

How to run a hackathon Joshua Tauberer (2017)

  • Similar to the open data HOWTO guide, this one in particular was very helpful during the organization of MakeZurich 2017.
  • How to Run a Hackathon (2015) is a similar reference from the Open Data Field Guide by Socrata

($) Characterizing hacking: Mundane engagement in US hacker and
makerspaces Davies, S. R. (2018)

  • Interesting survey of the "maker movement" across America, in particular the motivation of hackers and makers, and the emergence of counterculture.

The Sociology of Hackathons (2016)

  • "Hackathons are also a creative outlet for members of the field: a spiritual way to transcend the work that they produce in school or work."

Urban Hackathon - Alternative Information Based and Participatory Approach to Urban Development Pogačara, Žižek (2016)

  • A paper on a type of an interesting kind of hackathon, a theme we had experience while supporting the Urban Data Challenge.

Make the most of hackathon season (2016)

  • A short, fun guide from the Swiss hackathon community.

MIT Health Hackathon Handbook (2016)

Open4Citizens (2015)

  • This is a Horizon 2020 project which produced several guidelines related to running hackathons, including an organizer's handbook.

Open Data Hackathon How to Guide (2012)

Civic Apps Competition Handbook O'Reilly (2012)

Date uncertain:

Hackathon How-To Guide for Government Agencies from NYC.gov

  • An excellent overview of what's involved, clearly with a lot of design thinking involved.

Hack Code of Conduct

  • Inspired by the popular Conference equivalent, it is something we always believed, but needed to have on paper.

GovHack Handbook

  • Oriented mostly at participants, but worthwhile reading for organizers as well. See also general info and get involved.

MediaWiki Hackathons Handbook

  • Representative of some of the approaches and guidelines of the open source community.

Events

In pursuit of Fair Co-Creation

  • Workshop at DINAcon 2018, as mentioned above.

Hacking and Making at Time-Bounded Events: Current Trends and Next Steps in Research and Event Design

  • Part of a conference series that motivated the document you are looking at.

Science Paper Hackathon

  • Interesting event in itself, with some leads to further research.

Hack for Ageing Well

  • An event we organised for a European project, which had an interesting context and required extra oversight, like production of this report.

Law Mining Hackathon at OKCon

When blockchains, AI and Open Food Data come together

  • Updates from the latest Swiss hackathons, links to the Open Knowledge community.
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