Schedule
A successful hackathon needs more than just "ready, set, code". You need to have a good plan
for what to do when.
We suggest that you use the first couple of hours to introduce the theme of the hackathon, the
competitions, the rules, and to set the stage for the event. If the participants doesn't already
know each other, then an ice-breaking session would be a good idea.
You'll probably have set times for food and breaks. Maybe you want to run pitch rehearsals midway
through the hackathon? And at the end the teams will pitch their idea and prototype before the
jury.
All of this needs to planned and the schedule can easily be created and changed in the Program
module of Hackathoneer.
Badges
Pitching your idea in front of the jury means not only demo'ing your result, but you also need
to answer to the business prospective. How are you planning to go to market? How big is the
market? Who's the competitors? What will it cost to develop?
By using badges that the teams can collect to score points, you can gamify the whole product development
process. And you get to involve the whole team. Not only developers and designers, but the sales
and marketing people, domain experts, and even the finance folks.
Leaderboard
Scoring points is nice, but to drive the competition a live leaderboard will keep everyone up to date and strive for the top spot.
Feedback
In addition to the points scored from the badges, a jury should rank the contributions from
the teams. An often missing part of a hackathon is for the teams to get feedback on their
work. With the jury tool in Hackathoneer the jury will judge the teams, score them, and at the
same time write down the reasoning behind their judgement.
When the winners are announced, the jury's judgement and reasoning will be made available to the
teams which will provide valuable feedback for the attendees.