# Hackathon Guidelines

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### What is a Hackathon

Hackathons are research based events featuring projects and participants. Researchers gather to tackle the challenge using data science tools and approaches. This can be for the purpose of research (to solve the challenge) or as a training activity offering a learning experience to participants, or a mixture of both.

Our hackathons are usually 'collaborative' in that they are non competitive and participants form groups and work on the projects together.

We have experience running events that last just a few hours and those that last for one week, up to three weeks. Some events have featured just one challenge, while others up to six.

We often include preparatory sessions/ training workshops to prepare participants for collaboration.

#### To run a hackathon you will need:

* Six months planning and preparation time ahead of the event.
* Projects and challenges that have been prepared with scientific oversight.
* Participants to take part.
* A team of staff to support the event.
* A venue or online platform to host the event.
* Tools for communication and collaboration.

### Projects/Challenges

Projects are the central focus of the hackathon, the reason the scientists are collaborating. It takes longer than you think to curate a challenge to be ready for a team of researcher and so the process of selection and curation must start as one of the first activities.

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**For a project to be suitable for a hackathon style event:**

* The research question & goals should be clearly defined, even if the project is meant to be open and exploratory, this should be expressed clearly.
* Data to be used for the project must be suitable for addressing the research question.
* Data must be cleaned and research ready well ahead of the event.
* The difficulty level must be suitably challenging for the target audience.
* The research question should be interesting and appealing to participants (we find they get most excited by projects with real world positive impact/ implications).
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**Consider the following when recruiting and selecting projects:**

* What projects will feature in the event? Are these in place or do you need to recruit projects? How will projects be selected?

* What data will be used for the projects? How will this data be collected, how will permission be obtained to use it, how will it be cleaned/ merged and formatted in preparation for the research? Will the data contain sensitive information? If so, how will the data be stored and accessed to ensure it remains secure?

* What methods of analysis is the project proposing, what subsequent research resources will be required to support this?

* How will the results be used after the event/ what are the tangible outputs?
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#### Project Preparation

Wherever you get your projects/ challenges from, they should be checked by an impartial academic, to ensure suitable scope and event readiness.

For our challenges, we recruit a academic with special expertise relating to the project to work with the organisation and prepare the challenge for our events (Data Study Group PI). Our PIs support the organisation to scope the initial question and advise on how they should prepare their data.

### Participants

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**Before you recruit your participants, you need to decide:**

* Who the event is aimed at/ what career stage?
* What is the eligibility criteria (we suggest a minimum experience level is agreed upon and clear on the advert)
* How will participants apply to take part in the event?
* What is the motivator for participants to apply, is it a great training opportunity? Does it offer the chance to work on a novel or real world project? Will there be networking opportunities?
* How can you promote the opportunity to the target audience?
* How will you review and select attendees (including criteria and reviewers)?
* If your event is remote, can anyone in the world join? How will you manage different time zones if so?
* If your event is in person, will you be able to provide accommodation for participants? Will you be able to support the cost of travel to attend the event?
* If your event is in person will you be able to provide catering for your attendees?
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**To recruit your attendees:**

* Prepare a call for your event, including information about the format, expectations, requirements, projects, participant criteria and reasons to get involved.

* Prepare your scoring guidelines for reviewers.

* Prepare your criteria for participants.

* Prepare the application form for your events, what you ask in the application form is up to you, depending how you will select and assess your participants.

* Circulate the call to relevant channels.
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Its up to you how long the call is open for, but we suggest you let your participants know at least 3 weeks before the event if their application has been successful so they are able to make arrangements to join the event. Remember to factor in the time needed to review and select attendees.

### Event Format

When deciding the date, consider who will attend and when they will be available (e.g academic holiday may be the most suitable time if you are targeting students). Be sure to allow around 6 months preparation time.

In terms of duration, we have run both 3 hour long mini hackathon style events, week long events running from 9 am to as late as 11pm, as well as 3 week long remote engagements with core hours 9am -5pm.

Consider if your event run in person or online, or be a hybrid of the two.

In person events offer the opportunity for networking, higher engagement and a more memorable experience. For in person events you should consider the cost of accommodation and catering.

Online events mean anyone can join regardless of location and costs less to deliver. We have ran fully in person and remote events before and both work well.

It takes a while for groups to get organised and familiar sharing ideas and in accessing the resources, so plan for the first days/ hours to be slow.

Consider whether you could incorporate an element of training to prepare groups for collaboration. For our events we run a session on collaborative writing and a tech infrastructure overview workshop ahead of group work. We also cover some guidelines on data security.

### Event Support

You will need a team in place to support the event. Depending on the size and format of your event this could include:

**Event support** - To support with logistics and event delivery, especially important for in-person events.

**Science support** - To support groups with the science, in our events, the challenge PI joins in too so that groups can ask their expert opinion and sound check plans. We also have additional academic helpers for ad hoc support.

**Participant support** - Events can be stressful and sometimes more serious personal, or interpersonal might arise.

**IT Support** - If your participants will be accessing your systems/ infrastructure someone should be on hand to resolve and support with any technical issue.

For in person events you may also need to consider the number or qualified fire marshals and first aiders on site in relation to attendee numbers depending on the venue regulations.

### Event Logistics

Our events tend to follow the same basic format:

* A welcome/ information Presentation
* Workshops/ training sessions
* Group formation and initial brainstorm
* A social activity/coffee morning drop in session (any space that allows participants to get know each other on a more informal setting)
* Group work continues
* A feedback presentation with time for Q&A.

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**Our tips for delivering a hackathon event:**

* Share the event agenda with all attendees as early as possible.

* Create and circulate clear joining instructions the week before, day before and the morning of the event. Include event information and be clear about attendee expectations to prepare and during the event.

* Host (or pre record and share) a welcome session explaining what is going to happen and why, introduce the team and contact points / communication channels as well as stipulating a code of conduct.

* Ensure all attendees have a personal copy of what is expected of them, the task and instructions on how to access the resources necessary to work on the projects.

* We advise hosting some kind of informal social activity to relax attendees early on in the event. We run speed networking sessions and online quizzes for remote events and have taken our in person attendees bowling and to mini golf before.

* Schedule some kind of presentation/ feedback session towards the end of the event to that the groups can see what each other have been working on. We leave able time for Q&A as attendees are really interested in understanding each others work.

* Host a wrap up presentation summarising the great success of the event. Thank everyone for their involvement and clearly lay out what will happen next and further opportunities to engage.
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### Groups

For our events participants work in groups of around 7 - 15 (not including facilitators) to work on the project. We advise keeping groups under 10 for remote settings.

For our events, participants vote for which project they wish to work on and groups are decided by project preference. Provided you are clear about how groups are decided from the get go, it's up to you how groups are decided.

For our events we have a facilitator in place for each group. We pre select and invite them ahead of our event from the pool of applicants, usually those showing experience and enthusiasm for leading group collaborations. We run a separate training session for them ahead of the event. Facilitators are there to support the team in organising themselves, harnessing each others expertise and making progress towards the project. We have ran events with 1 x facilitator per group and 2x. We have found that 2 facilitators work best, especially for longer events.

We also invite members of the organisation hosting the challenge to work with teams. We stress they must act as participants and have no managerial control of the group. This way the participants learn from the industry representative and vice versa.

### Tools for Collaboration

Whether online or in person, your hackers will need tools to support collaboration:

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**Tools for your event:**

* A prescriptive check list or guidelines for groups to follow so that they can get themselves organised. Things can be a little slow or awkward at first so we usually have a check list for the first interaction, including things like introducing themselves and their expertise and establishing group rules of the game.

* A private chat function for each group so that they can organise themselves & communicate when they are not in meeting rooms or on remote calls (we use slack). Watch out for the security capabilities of your chosen chat platform, as a rule we say no discussion of the data set itself if permitted in the slack channels.

* A central communication platform between organisers and hackers. Used to relay messages and reminders and for the general organisation of attendees. Again we use slack for this.

* A white board feature. Somewhere that groups can brain storm and also to display their KanBan boards (we use these at our events and highly suggest you use this tool for organising work flows). For in person events this could be white boards themselves, and for online events tools like GitHub (for KanBans) and Miro (for the whiteboard function).

* A location to meet. For in person events meeting or class rooms are ideal, for online events attendees will need a space to meet remotely (For our events each group has their own private zoom rooms with break out room functions).
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### Useful Resources

* [Our Challenge Owner page (for prospective project collaborators)](https://www.turing.ac.uk/collaborate-turing/data-study-groups/get-involved-challenge-owner//)
* [Our PI page (for prospective DSG PIs)](https://www.turing.ac.uk/collaborate-turing/data-study-groups/get-involved-pi)
* [Our participant info page](https://www.turing.ac.uk/collaborate-turing/data-study-groups/get-involved-researcher)
* [Our participants FAQs](https://www.turing.ac.uk/collaborate-turing/data-study-groups/get-involved-researcher#faqs)
* [Our guidelines on how to write a great application (useful insight into the questions we ask)](https://www.turing.ac.uk/blog/how-write-great-data-study-group-application)