HackPoint. The experience of self-organization of the provincial hackathon from scratch

In this post I will tell you how in a short period of time to plan and organize a full-fledged provincial hackathon with lunches and checkpoints. How to find sponsors, how to organize the preparation of events and find participants, as well as not to forget about all the important little things. All interested readers - welcome under cat.

The whole story began with the fact that one of us got excited about the idea of ​​carrying out a real hackathon in our city, just like that, for fun. And the story ended with the fact that we received quite positive positive feedback for us about the quality of the event and recommendations to continue this whole movement. But first things first.

It happened in the small provincial town of Cherepovets, Vologda region. And it started with an idea.
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Idea

As we all know, such events are now very popular in the world. The wave of this popularity has come to our country. After viewing the reports on all sorts of hackathons and startup weekends, I really wanted to take part in this movement myself. Someone from our city even went to big cities for such events, but most of them only heard about it. That is why the idea to get the IT specialists of the city of Cherepovets out of their cozy quiet holes and get the whole thing right with us. In addition, I wanted to create an active IT-community, which is practically absent in our city. This is a bit strange since we have enough IT-companies and even have 2 universities that prepare good staff.

So, around January 2013, a crazy idea settled in one of us - to conduct a hackathon on our own right in Cherepovets. To check the importance and relevance of this venture, he immediately threw it on a local forum. Surprisingly, in addition to skepticism (“you won’t succeed,” “it’s hard to find sponsors”) there were quite a lot of enthusiastic people, as if they had been waiting for such an event for a long time. And this is quite natural, because in the city there are really a lot of IT people, both working for local companies and “freelancing” all over the world.

The idea was to hold an event in the summer. On all-about-everything turned out about six months. Almost a month was spent on the analysis and initial preparation (in more detail, below) unnoticed. And, suddenly, having thought and communicated with the organizer of similar events from another city, we realized that summer is a completely bad choice. I had to take some risk and hold an event at the end of April, that is, we only have 1.5 months left to prepare.

Team

Total main organizers got 4 people:

• Andrew
• Oleg
• Leonid
• Alexander

Many other people helped us as well, and we want to thank you so much.

Stage One: Preparation

HackPoint is not just a capacious combination of words, but also a cool free domain hackpoint.me , which we quickly occupied. Capacious name immediately inspired one of us to the appropriate theme of the logo.



The first step was to create a simple site that served as the business card of our event. Running a little ahead, we say that as we get closer to the event - the site was growing functional - and as a result, there appeared an opportunity to register as a participant, create your project, leave a request to join a project, and also recruit a team to your project. This functionality helped to organize some teams before the event.

Initially, we aimed to gather about 50 participants and about 10-12 projects, which is quite ambitious, considering that no one knew us, there was no such format in the region and some people were skeptical about the possibility of organizing a provincial hackathon.

In general, we made a plan, evaluated all the possibilities, and moved on to the second stage.

Stage Two: Promotion

We created a group of VKontakte , which became the center of the media promotion of the project and a means of communication for the project participants.

Without a specific place to promote the hackathon does not make sense. Therefore, we set about finding a suitable room. The venue for the event was found quite quickly. One of the organizers learned that his acquaintance had a new building, a kind of “creative space” for organizing events. It was planned to hold dance lessons, do photo shoots, etc. In addition, the repair and spirit premises fully corresponded to the traditions of minimalistic spaces like co-working, which are popular with hackathon organizers both here and abroad.

In general, we looked closer, found out the price tag, which we were completely satisfied with, booked a date for the event, and satisfied ticked off in general terms. After that, we were offered other premises several times, but it won in almost all parameters. Perfect, isn't it?

So successfully it happened for us that just during the HackPoint preparation period in the capital of our region - the city of Vologda - on April 5 and 6 a significant event for the IT industry of the region was held - “IT-forum. Modern information technologies. ”And of course, we gathered there to show our project to the target audience and, thus, to entice participants and sponsors that we need so much.

Time was very tight and we quickly, but more or less civilized, painted the design of the banner and booklets, quickly ordered them to be printed in the printing industry and exactly 1 day before the event got them in their hands.

At the forum itself, it was necessary to apply all of our managerial, organizational, and oratorical skills, in spite of all its technical nature and the underpowered skill of personal communication with various directors, managers and other representatives of companies. However, the result was not long in coming. Already on the first day of the forum, we “rounded up” all the IT and near-IT companies represented at this event, and on the second day we were pretty good at hunting for various kinds of IT specialists in order to attract them as participants. Fortunately, on the second day it was much easier to do this, because the organizers of the forum provided us with a whole stand on which we placed our banner and became much more visible to all those interested.

Stage Three: Sponsors

Despite the success of our presence on the forum, the search for sponsors was rather tense. Unfortunately, large IT companies almost immediately refused us in response to the sponsor's proposal for the event. And the matter is not at all in its conditions ... As it turned out, all large companies have a budget that is planned for the quarter or six months ahead. They said to us: “There will be the next event - come necessarily, only in advance. Now we can not help. ”

Difficulties arose, including with smaller companies, especially in our region. As a result of our vigorous efforts to attract sponsors, not a single Cherepovets or Vologda company, with a few exceptions, has given us financial assistance.

But with some companies we were able to agree on a mutually beneficial deal on the terms of “barter”. We gave them the opportunity to advertise their company and hunting, and they lent us some things necessary for the event. Thus, in our arsenal were: a projector, furniture, access to the network, sound equipment (microphone + sound desk with speakers), photographers and video, and even board games.

The main sponsors of our hackathon were: the Yaroslavl company Tenzor , the company Trilan from Moscow and the Cherepovets municipal institution TsMIRiT.

Stage Four: Conduct

Until the very last moment, we did not understand what we would get. Will the participants come to our HackPoint at all? On the last day of preparation, we became a real test of strength. It was necessary to decide a lot of organizational issues: bring and arrange furniture, set up the Internet, which was held at the last moment, collect and register participants, and start the event so that people understood that they had a serious event - stayed and actively participated in it .

When the first participants began to gather, we realized that there was a chance that everything would work out.
A week before, the start of the site, about 20 participants confirmed their participation, but as a result, about 40 people gathered at the event itself.



So, the event has begun. We greeted everyone, met, told about themselves, introduced our sponsors and gave them the floor. And then ... and then the most important thing began - the presentation of ideas. The participants were given a minute and a half to present the idea of ​​their project, interest free specialists to take part in the project, and about a minute to answer the most important questions from the audience. There was not enough time, it was difficult to present during this time, and nevertheless - everyone coped. And the best speaker of his idea, according to the results of a general vote, even received a special prize - “ostrich pillow”.



After that, the time for networking has come - the participants have gone to drink tea and coffee, communicate and organize in teams. An hour later, no free specialist left. All participants organized themselves into teams, and the work began to boil, the keys began to pound, the coolers boomed.

It should be noted that we, ourselves, still do not understand how, we managed to start the event on time, and spend everything “from and to” strictly according to the schedule, with the exception of some small rearrangements.

We also organized for all the participants - absolutely free meals (full meals tomorrow, lunch and dinner + cookies with coffee / tea). We had an interesting session with speakers from the field of IT-business (from Cherepovets, Vologda, Moscow). And besides, we had a wonderful hour of board games!



I would like to especially note that the Cherepovets organizers of the hackathon HackPoint are so harsh that they spent the night at the event site together with the participants right in their sleeping bags!

Photo and video report

In order not to describe in detail all that happened on HackPoint within two days, we present to your attention a small photo report and the final video of the event.

Our plans

It can be concluded that our HackPoint has taken place. We have already analyzed all our omissions and drew up a plan for an ideal hackathon, which we will implement in the fall of 2013. We are waiting for everyone to visit as participants and sponsors!