HackBytes Hackathon: Our First One

By Julia

Info about Bytes & Pieces’ first hackathon we hosted.

This was my first time hosting a hackathon.

At first I was pretty much completely lost, as I wasn’t sure what to do + there are many completely different tasks to be done — sponsorships, advertising, Devposting, finding speakers for workshops, mentors, judges, Discording, etc.

But talking to other people with experience and utilizing social media such as websites (for posting the hackathon schedule), Devpost (for keeping track of participants+projects), Discord (communicating), email(communicating+advertising), etc — it was much help.

What was the hackathon planning process like?

I started planning around the end of May (May 20th) and planned the hackathon to occur from June 11–12 2022. So I would say it took around 20 days (3 weeks). But most hackathons are planned within a much much longer time frame, but us students had AP exams beforehand (yep :)). 3 weeks wasn’t 100% ideal, but it was definitely enough time to plan all the steps:

1. Picking a time frame for the hackathon (I picked June 11–12, so participants get around 1.5 days to code)
2. Emailing tech companies that commonly sponsor hackathons (such as Desmos, 1password, Taskade)
3. Sending out Google Forms registration through advertising channels such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, discord servers, etc
4. Creating the hackathon rules+design on Devpost.com
5. Finding judges/mentors/workshop speakers (mostly people I met from other hackathons or technology events). Preferably judges/mentors would be software engineers or experienced coders.
6. And more.

Overall, HackBytes went incredibly well, better than we expected, and we are extremely, extremely grateful of everyone who came and helped out and/or participated:

• Our mentors + judges + speakers + volunteers, who worked hard to make our hackathon a smooth and fun experience
• Our 160 hackathon participants, who worked so hard over 1.5 days to create a passion project.

Check out participant and winning projects here: hackbytes.devpost.com