About hackathons

A hackathon is a programming marathon. It usually lasts for twenty-four hours, or two part days and a night of coding, where the participants team up and solve a problem together. There may be no given problem per se; the participants often have to come up with an idea. The size of the team is not fixed, but it is usual to have a maximum of five people in a team, otherwise, it can become hard to divide tasks between the team members. Hackathons usually have a specific theme like data science or VR.

Here’s an example of a typical hackathon schedule:

Day one

• Check-in
• Workshops on the topic of the hackathon (data science, VR, etc.). These are needed so that the participants with no previous knowledge of the topic can still participate
• Teambuilding and idea generation
• Idea presentation. The team leader presents the idea and the proposed plan of action. Experts (industry representatives, e.g. from Microsoft) validate the ideas and help to avoid errors
• Teams take their places and start coding
• Expert round, which involves mentoring the teams, correcting ideas or helping with the code
• Work continues throughout the night. Some of the experts are available on site or online

Day two

• Team roll call (yes, some teams are out by day two)
• Project completion
• Expert round in order to understand whether the project is ready for presentation
• Projects are presented in the evening with a presentation and a live demonstration. It is vital to show the completed work, a prototype, albeit imperfect. Either the whole team or a team leader presents the project. There is a jury is usually made up of industry experts.
• Prize giving

You can find out more about hackathons in this article.