Who am I?
I am Taylor Barnett
Currently a Developer Evangelist
at Keen IO, Organized HackTX for
3 years, Thrown dozens of 25-650
people events
You can find me at @taylor_atx
“
It’s a direct reflection of the
character of the leadership of
the event. Organizers care
about what the attendees of
the event are going to care
about.
-Rob Spectre, Twilio
Thanks!
Any questions?
You can find me at
@taylor_atx
taylor@keen.io
SlidesCarnival: This template is free to use under Creative Commons Attribution license.
Thanks!
Any questions?
You can find me at
@taylor_atx
taylor@keen.io
SlidesCarnival: This template is free to use under Creative Commons Attribution license.
Notas do Editor
Not saying this because I don’t like these things or don’t think they are great
Some of these things can be great, but it does not mean they are necessary for your event
Observed certain trends that we are focusing too much on things that don’t really matter in the end
Could be saving time, money, and other resources
Allow them to focus on the more important things, like all the other things that really matter when someone looks back on your event
Let’s create quality events from the start
For the x amount of time that you spent on getting a sponsor to buy something you didn’t need, could you have spent that time planning a better experience for a hacker the day of the event?
If the organizers care about money, that’s what the people who show up are going to care about
You need a place where hackers:
Have room to work on projects
Aren’t sweating or freezing
Have wifi, power outlets
Aren’t jammed in like a can of sardines
Though I am very anti-pizza
It unhealthy, not filling, greasy, but you also don’t need trays and trays California, Rainbow, and Shrimp Tempura Sushi Rolls for dinner
Rice and beans story…
Hackers care about:
Having enough food to feel full
That their stomachs are not grumbling when they are trying to work on their project
That their dietary and allergy needs are taken - for example…
Focus on these things, not the super fancy $15 a plate food
Focus on having snacks and not just meals
Focus on food lines that don’t take more than 30 minutes to get fed
Hackers have a ton of shirts, maybe even too many
Your sponsors give them most of them
You really don’t need to give them another shirt or two - it won’t make or break your event
There are cheaper swag items if you want your own hackathon personalized swag, maybe even more memorable and useful things like water bottles or notebooks to write their ideas and project design onto
Your opening ceremony should be for three things:
Continuing to set the tone of the event:
Code of Conduct
Reporting Guidelines
Anything hackers need to know about your event specifically
Your sponsors demos
Getting to why they actually showed up to your event - to hack, build, create, and design
At 8pm on Friday after a week of class, homework, and life, most people don’t want to listen to the same person for 15 min when they came to a hackathon
It’s not a speaker series or conference, it is a hackathon
Hackers are at events to learn by doing, not by listening
You don’t need the “best” hackers
You need hackers, and barely even that
You need people who want to build things from your local community
We need to stop talking about hackers like they are a cut of super rare meat that is USDA Prime rated, sustainably raised, grass fed, whatever
So what if someone is a first time hacker or has placed in 3 events, Hackathons are for learning and so many other things. Everyone can do those things, not just the “best” hackers.
I know it is something you probably tell sponsors, but it means nothing if 10 other events say it too
What even is the “best” hacker? It is a very unquantifiable person. Which leads us to….
How many hackathons have you been to that claimed to be the “best?” I have been to at least 5 “best” hackathons.
The thing about being the “best” is that there’s only one
Words like:
Awesomest
Best
Largest
Biggest (don’t have much reliable data to support these in a lot of cases)
Most Epic
Most Premiere
Most Epically Incredible Super-Premiere Really Really Big
You don’t need to be Shark Hacks 5000 - don’t even waste time thinking about them
From MLH’s research, they have found that 100-600 human events are the ones that are preferred the most
Worry about the experience for people at your event, not how many can we get here
How many people have you heard say a hackathon was “the best” because it had video games? Probably zero.
You really don’t need to waste time planning spaces with random attractions
When I asked the current HackTX team about stuff we don’t need, this was one of them that multiple team members brought up
They are always under utilized because people are busy hacking, eating, or resting
Some random attraction are:
Video games
Massages
Random games that only 30 out of hundreds of people at the event end up playing
Anything you are doing just for a WOW factor
You are just better off WOWing people in other ways
This one is tough
I know you want people to come to your event from all over our solar system
But too much of our budgets are travel reimbursements and too much of our time is spent working on them
If you want to do buses, sure! Go for it!
A quality event is easy brought down by travel reimbursements:
If you don’t handle them in time, people never forget
If you make bad decisions on who gets them, people never forget
If you take too long to answer emails about them, people never forget
They weigh events down - sometimes into the ground
Focus more on your local community and the community you have within a 6 hour bus ride
You’d be shocked how many hackers or soon to be hackers you can find in this radius if you do outreach right
You know what hackers who spent the last 24+ hours awake call an amazing awards ceremony? Naptime.
Just like an opening ceremony, you are standing between hackers and something they want
People want three things out a awards ceremony:
To see what cool projects people made
Find out if they won anything
For it to be over so they can go home and sleep
You should not waste time during it, and please don’t have another keynote speaker
Spend time trying to make it as fast as possible instead:
Prepare and optimize transitions between hacks
Work with sponsors and other people who need to give out prizes
Work with hackers so that their demos are successful and don’t cause delays
You can make up for a memorable “experience” with things that matter even more than the stuff you don’t need
Could be saving time, money, and other resources, which will allow to focus on more important things
Work with sponsors more to help do mentorship better
Create resources, apps, creative ideas, and more to help make sure that no one leaves feeling lost
After looking at survey results from past events, the thing that caused attendees to have a bad experience most often was getting lost and not knowing what to do or who to go to
We don’t do enough to fix this
We need to be putting more our time, energy, and resources into creating support hacking environments
Code of conduct
Reporting guidelines
Tone of your event from the start of marketing it to months after it occurs
The space and making sure everyone feels safe and comfortable in it
How to make everyone feel included, not just diverse
Having sponsors that believe in the same things you do as well as adding quality
Organizers underestimate the amount of time it takes to create a supportive hacking environment
It’s not just two or three people should work on, it is something everyone should be working on
Last week I saw this tweet from the CTO of npm, the javascript package manager that some...
Creating a support hacking environment is *really* hard
It takes a lot of work to make two things that are mutually exclusive to be at least somewhat compatible
It takes a lot of work to define your space clearly
Being thoughtful takes time and organizers don’t do enough of introspective thinking about their events
They want to make these cool, awesome things, but that’s isolating
If you don’t have a supportive hacking environment, everything else means nothing
Your random attractions, travel reimbursements, coolest venue, and shirts will be forgotten