John inspiring teams on the Recoding Aviation Hackathon, organized in partnership with many international airports.
A lot of people think of a hackathon as a magic blanket solution that's guaranteed to elevate your technology or teams to new heights. As one of the founding partners of BeMyApp, I always present a one-day workshop to guide executives in defining the goals they want to fulfill.
Even now, I am surprised to learn that many people hold a hackathon simply because a manager has asked them to, and then come to realize they don't know why they're doing it. Having organized upwards of 250 events, I'm constantly telling people to focus on one (and only one) objective in order for your hackathon to be successful. Once this is clear, results are yours for the taking.
A small exercise to get your hackathon off to a good start is to list potential objectives on coloured post-its. Then take a step back and choose one objective to rule them all. Your outcomes will depend on your objective. Some people decide they're hosting a hackathon to simply meet and interact with different segments of their business, this can work too, but make sure you communicate this to the team. Always make clear what you want to get out of it.
Here are some other useful considerations for those looking to use hackathons as a way to move their business forward.
Before you decide on a theme, recruit participants, or plan the event, it helps to know exactly what you want out of it. Below are five of the most common objectives a hackathon can deliver. The key is to pick one to lead with, not chase all five at once.
You've heard it already, but I'll say it again: the relationships you foster with developers are important. Embracing developer feedback is important. Their knowledge and, more importantly, distance from your work or project make them invaluable in pointing out what you may have missed or deemed a lower priority. To engage them, host a hackathon, make your APIs or SDK available, and have them explore your platform. This will go a long way to building a thriving developer ecosystem around your API or SDK. You'll also learn, in real time, what works and what doesn't, which can only result in a stronger product or service.
"A small exercise to get your event off to a good start is to list potential objectives on coloured post-its."
More and more, hackathons are being used to recruit top talent. In this highly creative and engaged environment, you'll have the chance to observe prospective employees by noting their skills, multitasking ability, cultural fit within your existing team, or how they perform in a real-life working environment. If it's an internal hackathon, the same applies. You'll be poised to spot the best candidates for upcoming roles directly within your company.
All companies should be prioritizing digital innovation, not just those in tech. We live in a digital economy, where non-tech businesses are paving the way for digital transformation. Embracing digital can extend your reach, improve management decisions, and speed the development of new products and services. This is where an internal hackathon can help, bringing several departments together to ideate, innovate, and collaborate. In a digital transformation hackathon, teams are tasked with using new technologies to disrupt a current business process, i.e., to shake things up, finding more effective practices while they're at it.
"Remember to get clear on your objectives first and define what your business would like to accomplish, or which problems are to be overcome."
As recently reported in Forbes, Professor Alex Edmans of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania found that businesses with high employee satisfaction perform better than those without. Hackathons are highly engaging activities that offer effective team building, cross-departmental collaboration, and the potential to transform a company's mindset. By collaborating, employees discover new ways to work. This, in turn, stimulates creativity, engages employees, and starts a much-needed culture shift.
Let's face it, getting a new product to market involves a lot of red tape, delays, and approvals, particularly when multiple departments are involved. It may take a corporation a few months to come up with an idea, a few months to finalize a prototype, and even more to get legal approval.
Next, you launch a go-to-market strategy, and finally a real product is available for purchase. From my experience working with startups at hackathons, we have developed a method to shorten time-to-market for product launches. It's a framework that allows your staff to repeatedly develop and launch products faster than before. Do get in touch if this is something that you're currently working towards. We're happy to help.
Learn how to choose the right hackathon management partner based on your objectives
Every hackathon needs a way to tell whether it hit its objective. What you measure depends entirely on why you ran the thing.
If developer outreach was the goal, watch participation and whether developers keep building with your API after the event ends. If it was recruitment, pay attention to the conversations that actually went somewhere, not just who showed up. If it was innovation, track how many ideas or prototypes make it past demo day into something real.
Decide what success looks like before you start, and make sure the teams know it too. That way, when it's over, you're not just asking "did that go well?" You're asking whether it did what you actually set out to do.
The hackathon is just the start. A team can build something genuinely good on demo day, and if nobody's decided what happens next, that idea just sits there.
Remember to get clear on your objectives and define what your business would like to accomplish, or which problems need to be overcome. Perhaps you'd like to positively impact marketing, tech, product development, or HR strategy. All these and more are possible with a well-planned hackathon.
Now that you've browsed some potential objectives, getting to work on your hackathon will be that much easier.
Your objective shouldn't just shape the event. It should shape what you do with what comes out of it.
Once you know what you want your hackathon to achieve, the next step is making it happen. Whether your goal is developer outreach, recruitment, or digital transformation, BeMyApp can help you organize your hackathon from start to finish, from setting the right objective to running the event and measuring results.
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