Hackathons/Hackathon tips for organizers

This page is a work in progress and is not complete! Please feel free to edit it with your own thoughts and add more sections below that you want to address or that should be addressed by someone else.

Help desk:
It is nice to have a help desk near the entrance to your event that is staffed during the entire event, ideally by two people at a time. Event attendees will have lots of questions, and it will be nice for them to have a known place to go.

Typical Example Questions: Tips:
 * Can you help my print/scan something?
 * Where is the closest pharmacy/public transportation stop/electronics store/market/bank?
 * Questions about the event schedule and rooms
 * How to get to the airport?
 * It is nice to have local maps and public transportation options available
 * It is nice to have multiple language support at the desk

Name Badges
Event name badges are very helpful to have at events and are used to help event staff recognize participants, and for participants to recognize and get information about each-other easily.

Information to Include on the Badge: Tips: Examples:
 * Name
 * Nick Name/User Name
 * Event logo
 * Languages spoken (optional)
 * Affiliation (option)
 * Fill in the blank section for participants to write in what they want to talk about
 * The name badges are generally worn around a participants neck on a lanyard.
 * The badge should be two sided, the two sides can be different or identical, but each side should have the participants name at the very least. **important**
 * Some event organizers have successfully included schedule or local maps inside the event badge

Help for attendees the day after the event
Make sure that there are volunteers and local experts schedule to be around the day after the event ends. People will need help getting to the airport, checking out and dealing with any travel issues that come up.

Food
Hackathons are international events, and the attendees often have a wide verity of tastes and dietary restrictions. A common complaint is that vegetarian meals are often overlooked and consist of salad and a side dish. It is nice to make sure that vegetarians have multiple options and actual entrée options.

If there is only have one mean option and one vegetarian option there will likely still be people who dislike or are not able to eat what is available.

Tips:
 * Buffets are generally the best options, people can pick and choose what they like and don't like
 * Vegetarian main dish examples: Pastas, rice dishes, grilled mushrooms, lentils, and other warm/substantial dishes.
 * Other eating preferences/restrictions to consider: Gluten free, lactose intolerance, vegan, kosher
 * It is good practice to ask what people's eating restrictions are during registration so it is not a surprise at the event.

Emergency Information for Participants
Make sure people know how to get help when something goes wrong! Pre-planning in this area is very important and will save a lot of time, energy and effort in the event of an emergency.

Recommended Pre-plans: Tips:
 * Closest hospital, contact info, directions & how they would deal with international patients
 * Does your area have high probability for natural disasters? You should publish what to do in case of the event of one occurring (examples: earthquake, flood, tsunami, hurricane)
 * Emergency contact number to be provided to all event attendees. The number should be a local number that will be monitored 24 hours by a local organizer or rotating shift of local organizers. Event attendees can call this number if they become ill, have legal trouble, there is a sexual assault, they are lost in the city, etc.
 * Fire
 * Terrorist related event
 * Violence, a fight or harassment taking place at the event
 * Have all participants agree during registration to the Friendly Space Policy
 * A list of local emergency phone numbers should be published on the event wikipage and also distributed to all event organizers

A/V setup
Main hacking space:

Each participant will need at least one electrical outlet, often having more than one available per participant (for mobile devices) is appreciated but not mandatory.

Having a stage and microphone with projector in the main hacking space is helpful for even organizers to open/close the event and make announcements.

Breakout Rooms:

More electrical outlets, you can never have too many!

Projectors (with the ability to connect with multiple types of laptops)

Microphones

Professional Video Recording, it is nice to have at least one of the breakout rooms staffed with somebody who can record sessions for later publication.

Location of Closing Ceremony and Hackathon Showcase

(this will be the main hacking space at some events and will be a separate space at others)

Microphone

Projector

The ability for people to quickly and easily connect their laptop to the projector. We will have a series of 3-5 minute demos and the easier it is to switch between speakres the better.

Pre-Event Social Events
It is nice to plan a social event the evening before the main hackathon starts. People will be arriving into town and will likely want to meet other participants. This is a good opportunity to have some type of event where people can mingle, have fun together, and meet eachother.

Past examples:
 * Quiz night
 * Informal designated bar meeting spot

Hackathon Social Events
Part of the value of hackathons are the informal discussions/introductions, the fun that is had, and the friendships that are built. Holding social events each evening allow people to more easily find something to do and spend time with other hackathon participants. Use your imagination and local knowledge to come up with new fun ideas.

Past examples of successful social events: Tips:
 * Renting arcade and video game equipment for night time at the event venue
 * Boat tour of Amsterdam canals
 * Dance parties (make sure to also provide space for people who don't want to dance to socialize)
 * Renting out a restaurant/bar
 * Karaoke (make sure to also provide space for people who don't want to dance to socialize)
 * Keep the main hackathon space open in the evening (24 hours if possible) so that people who don't want to socialize or who want to continue to to hack have a quite place to go to get work done.
 * If Hackathon social events are not organized many participants will leave the venue and go out into the city on their own and end up not spending time building community with each other.
 * Make sure to include options, drinks and fun for people who do not drink alcohol.
 * Make sure that any offsite venue you choose will be able to cater to all your attendees. For example some bar-venues in the USA only allow people over the age of 21 to enter, but we almost always have hackathon participants under the age of 21.
 * The closer to the venue the social event, the higher percentage of participation. Ideally some of the social events should even be onsite.
 * Including an optional evening city or museum tour is often highly appreciated by attendees, they otherwise often sneak away on their own to do this if it is not formalized.
 * If alcohol is not provided (or available for sale) at social events, many participants will often leave to find it on their own. It is OK to include this in your social events but should not be the centralized theme.
 * Often if you get in touch with the city in the place you will be holding the event they will have good suggestions and sometimes even provide free or comped options for you because they want to support the tourism, non-profit & wikimedia movement that you are brining to their city. Example: WMCH was already providing event attendees with free Zurich public transportation passes. They choose to do a lake tour social event on a public transportation ferry. This was free of any extra cost.

Don't print schedule of sessions in advance
Hackathons sessions are not all scheduled in advance. Many sessions are schedule on the first day of the conference or even an hour before the session will take place. If you print out a hard copy of the session schedule it will be out of date very quickly, but participants will still check it to see what is going on and miss out on session opportunities.

Tips:
 * Projecting the schedule onto a TV screen or well directly from the wikipage (and reloading it regularly) is appreciated. Whenever we don't have this, multiple people request it.
 * You can print out a hard copy of the schedule that does not include specific sessions but instead has meal times, opening/closing session times, social events, and breakout room information.
 * Printing out hard copies of the updated sessions schedules each morning and at lunch and posting them on the doors of meetings rooms and switching out the old versions can work. Just make sure to switch them regularly and make sure to note that they might not be exactly accurate. This can save you from fielding a lot of questions about "what is going on"
 * Announce in the opening of the event that they best place for up to date schedule information is on the event wiki

Wall postings
Help people get oriented and figure out how to navigate the event

Examples of things that can be posted Tips
 * Maps of the venue
 * Social media information (commons category, IRC channel: #WMHack, twitter, etc)
 * Schedule (see topic "Don't print schedule of sessions in advance" for dos and don'ts)
 * Wifi information

It is also nice to have a whiteboard or paper flipchart at the questions desk/reception area where you can make announcements about changes/social events.

Sessions not edited until event
As an event organizer, don't worry if you have lots of meeting rooms and breakout spaces that look like they will be empty during the event. About half of sessions are not scheduled in advance of the hackathon and the more space you have the more ways people will find to use it.

If you end up having breakout room space left over you can still put it to good use
 * Quite room
 * Loud groups can move to their own space
 * Your own planning breakout sessions
 * If the weather is nice and wifi works, some people like to move their sessions outside

Public Transportation Tickets
Ideally hackathons allow people to travel to and from the airport and around the host city for free. WMDE and WMCH were able to work with their local governments / transportation agencies and find ways to provide attendees with hackathon name badges that also included public transportation passes. WMCH even was able to email these passes out in advance of the event. Whenever possible, we like to spare costs to event attendees.

Kindergarten/Support of Family travel
WMFR had a very successful Kindergarten/Day Care space for people attending the event with their families. They hired a local agency to be around to take care of the children so their parents could focus on the Hackathon. This was very appreciated and if you choose to do it at your event it is nice to announce it before or during registration so that families can plan ahead.

It is also nice to provide housing options for couples and families traveling together. Examples: Rooms with one large bed, shared rooms with multiple beds

Be very specific about how you expect the significant others of you event to eat. Can they join the event at meal times and eat for free? Will they need to pay a small "family" registration fee to cover the cost of their meals? Do they need to find their own meals?