How to organize an educational program hakaton. HackDay Experience

In many ways, the quality of projects at the exit of your hackathon depends on the quality of the educational program. The program should be as applied as possible, cover the needs of all groups of participants as much as possible, provide knowledge that can be applied here and now at the event and at the same time last for a maximum of three hours. The article tells how to meet all these requirements and not die in the process.

In the internal document "Regulations on the conduct of HackDay" read the following: "Goal: to facilitate the process of creating a prototype of the project for the participants of HackDay and give them information about further ways of development."

The educational program of the hackathon is one of the most important components of your event. This is a complex thing in which many details need to be taken into account. As a rule, this is a very ungrateful lesson - the participants of the event do not fully understand how educator is more important than high-quality nutrition or stable Internet, and most speakers find it difficult to keep within the short time allotted and give practical knowledge instead of theorizing.
As a result, the person most interested in a quality program is the organizer of the hackathon. Fighting before the event with the speakers, and at the event with teams that do not want to go to master classes, you need to repeat to yourself that the planned actions will ultimately give plus a hundred points to the projects and the organizer for the PR of the event.

The educational program is held close to the beginning of the event. What to consider:
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1. The program should be as applied.

This means that the knowledge given by speakers at master classes can be applied here and now at an event. This rule applies to all areas of knowledge without exception: programming, design, UX \ UI, marketing, promotion, legal aspects. The educational program should make life easier for participants and help them develop a project in the fullest and best possible way. If this is a master class in programming / design / design, then the usual topic is how to reduce development time with the help of such-and-such technology or such-and-such techniques without losing quality. If the theme of the master class is marketing \ PR, then the speaker tells how it is easier, faster and cheaper to find your audience and start sales, having a modest prototype and a budget for promotion that is close to zero.

2. Maximum coverage of the interests of all groups of participants.

Do not forget that we are dealing with five main groups: authors of ideas, programmers, designers, designers, marketers. Total we have areas for master classes: organization of development in a limited time, prototyping, design, programming (web and mobile devices), design, promotion. Here you can add a speaker who will talk about communication with investors of projects of early stages.

3. The maximum duration of the hackathon educational program is three hours.

Standard hakaton goes 48 hours. Participants and you need quality prototypes at the exit. Do not waste your and their time on theory.
Create a program so that each speaker has at least 20 minutes, but no more than 40 minutes, for a speech and at least 10 minutes for questions from the audience. If master classes in length exceed three hours in total, put in the beginning of the program general topics that are interesting to all specialists (accelerated development, prototyping), and then divide the streams by interest.


Headliners

A separate line will tell about the stars in the educational program of the hackathon. To entice superstars to a hackathon is not easy - it is a small format that you need to spend a lot of time on, and the advantages for a star are small and dubious. There is no one recipe where a star can visit you with a master class or become a mentor. From HackDay's experience, sincere friendly invitations “share experiences” work best. No need to delve into the motivation - such a person most likely has no valid reason to participate, only out of sympathy for you.
You can and should spend money on the most desirable speakers - flight, accommodation. It can and should be done at the expense of other items of expenditure. The experience of a successful person is immeasurably more important than pizza or gifts to the winners.
Participation of the star will increase interest in the hackathon from participants and the media, and you can use it without hesitation.

Here, perhaps, that's all.

In the next article I will talk about the requirements for the site on which the hackathon is held: what optimal conditions we need to achieve the desired goal.

Articles about hackathon organization:
1. Review experience HackDay. Hackathon and business symbiosis. Format and major errors.
2. Work with information partners of the hakaton.
3. How to attract participants to the hackathon.