Most critiques of hackathons come from a basic misunderstanding of what a civic hackathon is, really. (A lot of this pretty much mirrors Chris Whitaker's Civic Innovation Toolkit, which is awesome. Also check out the engagement page on Project Open Data for more resources and guidelines.)
A civic hackathon is not...
- Free labor -> we civic hackers are pretty good at figuring out when you're organizing something instead of hiring developers.
- A marketing event for advertising your finished app or project -- nothing necessarily wrong with marketing events, but they are not civic hackathons and it won't work very well if you attempt to conflate them
- A way to build an app in a day -- you should not expect to build an entire working thing, it's just not enough time
Hackathons are very good for...
- bringing a bunch of people together to brainstorm solutions to a problem --> i just added a how to guide to project open data engagement page based on how the white house ran group brainstorming at their data jams ---- it's very effective if you get a good diverse group of people together (diverse skills and backgrounds)
- also, --> a day focused on those brainstorming jams can be a very good way to demonstrate the potential value of a data set that you may be having trouble liberating
- bringing more people into your community, getting new people interested in your data IF you offer a lot of training -- so this is a model I used to get more women at Code for DC and in the DC tech scene in general with the Tech Lady Hackathon, I offered 3 tracks of intro to coding training all day alongside the hacking projects
- testing or getting feedback on a new data set or API --> make sure you have the experts there to help explain the data
- it's possible to do more things, I've seen some especially awesome civic hackathons accomplish more in a day, but those are very difficult to pull of and I think require a lot of organizing experience
So, to organize a hackathon that doesn't suck...
- do the hard work of community organizing --> recruit a strong group of folks who are in the community and can help you organize and recruit good attendees -- a lot of community organizing is like a pyramid scheme -- please do not just pretend to ask for their advice so you can get them to promote it
- start recruiting people who are traditionally underrepresented first --> when we talk about improving diversity in tech, we're not telling you to block or discourage people who are traditionally well represented, we're telling you to work harder to find the people who are underrepresented because by definition they're harder to find and they are less connected to the ways we normally promote this stuff
- include an explanation of what people should expect when they walk in the door and the schedule
- include contact info for questions
- offering training at the same time is always a good thing - can't say enough good things about this, it sends a good message that you're offering a more welcoming environment, improves the atmosphere of the day, attracts more types of contributors
If you have questions, again check out the engagement page on project open data or feel free to tweet at me @leahbannon with any questions (don't email)