Collection of resources outlining why and how you should use Discord for a virtual hackathon. Based off the MLH guide.
Discord has historically had the stereotype of being a chat app targeted towards gamers, so its professional use cases are quickly dismissed. However, I've personally seen the power of Discord when used effectively and it has significantly changed my view towards it. The goal of this document is to walk through the logistics of a hackathon and outline how to use Discord as the one-stop-shop for the entire event.
The functionality of Discord is greater than most other apps. Not only does it have channels like slack, it also allows admins to create categories of channels. It's easy to create a category of channels for a hackathon to separate them from other more general ones. It also has free voice and video rooms like Zoom. You have more control over the server with roles, where you can control who sees what channels, who can add/delete/modify things, etc. And according to this viral tweet, "slack looks like a boomer discord"
I wonder what his son would say about teams...
From the digital software section of the guide:
Include the following channels on your platform:
- Team-Formation: Channel for hackers to form teams
- Ask-Organizers: Channel for hackers to ask organizers any questions that come up throughout the event.
- Introductions: Channel for hackers to introduce themselves. Have your team set the norm for this by introducing yourselves.
- Random: Channel for anything that isn't hackathon related.
- Ask-Mentors: Channel for hackers to connect with mentors when they need help on their projects.
- Mentors-Internal: Channel for mentors to talk with eachother and with organizers.
- Admin: Channel for your organizing team. We recommend creating an admin voice channel as well!
Pulled from the MLH guide:
I'd like to break down each of those components...
We want to know who attended and how to reach them. This blog post outlines a great way to use a bot to automate check-in. Bots are a heavily leveraged in Discord for some very cool features. Once people are checked in (can happen in advance of actual hacking), they can start chatting in the channels to introduce themselves, find teams, brainstorm ideas (not work on them!), etc.
Could edit together a nice video welcoming everybody to the hackathon. Possibly string together multiple clips of people saying things? Live stream on YouTube, Twitch? Possibilities are endless here, but you can announce when the event is happening in the #announcements channel, which only the event organizers have access to post in.
These can be live streamed or pre-recorded and "premiered". The events can be announced in the #announcements channel, and they can link to the appropriate platform. Depending on the streaming platform, there can be a chat for real-time interaction with the presenter. I attended a virtual conference (Adobe MAX) that I thought was run very well -- instead of live-streaming, they had their presenters pre-record their videos and "premiere" them at a certain time. They added that time to their schedule along with a link to the video itself, and the experts who made the presentation were available in the chat to help and answer questions. This model allowed for very efficient time management since they could impose a time cap on the pre-recorded workshops submitted. As far as format goes, these were often just screen recordings with talking head bits. I personally found this method to be extremely effective for 1. respecting everyone's time, 2. helping people asynchronously, and 3. making the recording more concise and useful. I found myself spending an extra 30 mins to an hour replaying certain parts of the workshop to really hammer home the skills demonstrated. With more concise, pre-recorded videos, it was easier for me to "put in work after class" so-to-speak. This is all just personal opinion, however. Take it with a grain of salt :D
One of my favorite versions of this was the way PSU datafest has run it in the past. The event organizers would come up with obscure questions to answer from the data and the first one to come up with the right answer would win swag. This can be easily emulated in Discord. We can make a channel for specific mini events we want to sprinkle in throughout the hack. For example, maybe we make a channel called #wrangle-for-swag in which the event organizers can pin questions to the channel and the first person to wrangle the data and respond correctly to the question can be recognized, reached out to, and awarded. Pinning messages makes them easier to find if everyone starts spamming the chat with possible answers. If that happens, we can easily turn on slowdown mode, which limits the amount of time between posts for participants.
In a virtual hackathon, I imagine you'd have to verify a student's identity, get their address, and ship them swag if so desired... or you could send them virtual rewards like gift card codes, etc.
There are plenty of channels participants can take a mental break from serious stuff. There are meme channels, random channels, and I've even seen channels with fun objectives like #count-to-500 and every person posts a message counting to 500. Once they get there, the admin will secretly change the title of the channel to increase the number and once people start noticing, the messages flood in.
You can also link a music service with a voice channel, so there can be a "study-beats" channel where there's good coding music playing.
There's a lot of creative potential here, just have to think outside the box.
There can be specific channels dedicated to sponsors. Say BP sponsors the event and there are 2 representatives available in the #sponsor-bp channel -- students can join the channel, read what's been discussed, and ask questions. If a more personal discussion needs to take place, the sponsors and participants can join a voice/video channel in Discord and it's just like the virtual version of walking up to that sponsor's table at the IRL event.
Participants can pre-record videos demonstrating their project and submit them for judging. They can be made available for viewing after judging.
Same deal as the opening ceremony. Pre-recorded or live streamed.
The goal of a hackathon is to learn new things in the fastest way possible to build as much as you can in a short period of time. In regards to Gather, having to use a video-game like interface to get help on things might not prove to be the most time efficient. Discord provides a very clear and organized way to virtually meet people, get help, solve problems, and learn new things.