I’ve noticed that there’s a lack of knowledge about Hackathons, which I believe to be an amazing way of building new products and learning by doing. So to spread the word, I decided to write an article about it. You will get a deeper knowledge about what is a Hackathon (also known as a hackfest, a hack day or a codefest) and what are the benefits of Hackathons and I’ll finish with a few tips that will help you optimise your next Hackathon.
Initially, the word Hackathon comes from the word Marathon (a long or difficult activity in a short period) and Hack, here meant as exploratory programming.
Well, during a Hackathon, you spend a short period of time, usually between 24-48h (can go up to a week), building, creating and delivering a product. The idea is to collaboratively code in an extreme manner, to start from scratch and end with a working prototype. It’s often a sort of competition, where teams of programmers, developers, designers and project managers come together to design & build a nice product, a software project.
Originally, it started in the open source community and today is very common among programmers. You can find all sorts of Hackathons, some are mainly intended for educational matters, other for social, and others are basically to create a software. Very often, businesses use it as a chance to get creative ideas by their employees, some sort of prototype that will be low cost at the end of the day.
During those events, people meetup to face different real life problems. You could find Hackathons that have a theme assigned and you have other ones where there are no themes and you therefore pitch ideas and build on that. It’s a great opportunity to put together a large number of people to address all together a same problem and watch how ideas and results flow.
It usually all starts with an introduction about the event (about the topic if there is one) and then comes a kickoff where the participants will pitch product ideas and form teams based on interests and specific skills.
As mentioned earlier, a Hackathon can be of 24h but can go up to a week. So of course for shorter Hackathons, there is more pressure. Adding to that competition, you can quickly remember the exams periods at university. Work, work, work, drink coffee, have a quick bite, drink some redbull, sleep very few hours, work more, etc. At least that’s what my exams period looked like!
After the work being done, teams will show their product to others. It’s not always the case, but quite often, you will have a jury that will be looking at the demos of products and will be in charge of choosing a winner team that will get a prize.
Still not 100% convincend that you should participate in a Hackathon? Well wait till you read about the benefits.
By now, you should be convinced to try out a Hackathon. Or at least, you should understand why it can be really interesting for some.
How to become a software developer?
The career path of a software developer?
Have you ever heard of a Hackathon? In the software development world, it’s a buzzword.
A hackathon is a sprint-like event in which developers and others involved in software development, including designers, project managers, and others, collaborate intensively on innovative projects during several days, normally between a day and a week. In most of the cases, a hackathon is organized to create something new, or to solve a particular problem. And today, I would like to show you some interesting Hackathon projects created by leading companies around the world.
To be honest, Hackathons have become a must these days, companies consider then in terms of innovation encouragement and talents development.
Hackathons are also adopted as the normal internal business activity, involving own employees to foster innovation and creative problem solving which go beyond traditional business and IT transformation.
Hackathon projects can inspire a concerted amount of development effort on a focused project for a short period of time and can increase attention to a critical issue. For people who need motivation and hope in their business, hackathon projects can create this sense of possibility. It can also help to find unexpected internal resources to foster digital innovation.
The nature of innovation has changed in recent years and today is characterized more by speed, flexibility, and openness. When we talk about big companies, collaborating with different departments, especially with IT, can be an issue. And a fast solution is like a dream, which never comes true. But, according to Fast company, as corporations start to embrace the idea of software-first future, they start adopting hackathons for everything from R&D and product roadmap to talent retention. For Fortune 500s, it’s more than just an event, it is a change initiative.
For example, during the past few years, Capital One has run internal hackathons for a variety of internal innovation, such as building prototypes, pitching ideas to senior business and technology leaders, creating new products, introducing new capabilities, and adopting new solutions. It is a great way to help enable a maker culture that is required in a modern company.
Another example is Hasbro, which a few years ago held a hackathon where 150 developers came and developed 45 products, equivalent to billions of dollars in traditional R&D ( source: Fast company).
As for the traditional automobile industries, they are using hackathons as a means of creating in-car apps and safety features, according to the hackathon organizers. Chevrolet offered eyes-free 4G LTE integration data with AT&T to allow hackers to create apps for the vehicle’s safety while Ford has experimented with hackathons for social driving apps. And Edmunds.com has been teaming with Fortune 500 companies for invite-only hackathons called Hackamotive, where a variety of people get to hack the car-shopping experience using its vast auto data.
And I should say, it is not always just about technology. It’s about how you can implement it, how you can work as a team, how you can solve problems, how you can work with shifting environments, etc.
1.Seeing the problem from different perspective
You actually learn by doing, learn by watching how other people solve problems. There is always more than just one solution to a problem and this is a great opportunity to see different approaches to the same problem.
2. Sense of accomplishment
How often teams start a project and never finished it? Or thought about something, but never tried it out? A team, especially in big companies, become exhausted of that “never-ending” tasks. Sometimes people need to work on something that gives immediate results. It helps to increase motivation and proactivity.
3. New talents, new teams
A Hackathon is a perfect place for both extroverts and introverts to foster relationships and improve soft skills while engaging in something they have a shared and growing interest in.
4. Innovation
Hackathon projects are a ground for new ideas. They create a uniquely productive atmosphere that forces participants to distill their visionary concepts down to actionable solutions.
5. Collaboration environment
Hackathons build a bridge between developers and marketing people. Hackathon projects help establish two-way conversations between those that develop the technology and the people that use them. This feedback loop increases efficiency and productivity, increases motivation and makes both teams understand each other better.
6. Soft skills enhancement
A good professional is recognized not for his hard skills, but for the combination of hard and soft skills. And hackathon environment is absolutely the perfect place to foster those skills.
Paypal
Fast company says, that PayPal hosts Hackathons around the world. The company hosted Battle Hacks in 14 cities around the world, calling on the most talented developers to work for 24 hours to create something magical that incorporates the PayPal API and solves a local problem. For example, one of the top projects of these hackathons was an app to help puppies in shelters, connecting users with dogs available for adoption and allowing donors to use PayPal to contribute money towards vaccinations and vet treatments.
Foursquare
Foursquare notably helds large and global hackathons, in which over 500 developers at over 30 sites around the world competed to create applications using the Foursquare API. According to Techcrunch, one of the top projects was “Plan Your Next Trip”, which uses the Foursquare API to help you plan out your upcoming 2-day trip to any city in the world using the recommendations from Foursquare’s “Explore” feature.
Banco Sabadell
Several years ago Banco Sabadell started to organize Instant Banking Hack Days, Banco Sabadell’s hackathon, to boost digital innovation in the financial sector with the collaboration of Mobile World Capital Barcelona. They gather a large number of programmers in order to generate new ideas and applications. The participants in the Instant Banking Hack Day work on creating new web and mobile applications to enhance the direct experience of users in four aspects: means of payment, a transformation of customer service, the Internet of things and contextual and predictive services. For more than 30 hours, 23 teams built fintech apps and software at Banco Sabadell’s hackathon. It took place in Barcelona and Banco Sabadell has become one of the most tech-friendly banks in Spain. Not only it offers access to an API for developers to build apps on top of it, but it also runs the BStartup 10 startup program and hackathons for fintech projects. The winners of the Instant Banking Hack Day were:
As part of 4YFN, Banco Sabadell held Hackathon dedicated to the translation of business rules in Smart Contracts into Blockchain, the revolutionary new technology which allows data to be transferred in a simpler and more secure way. Hackers and developers from all over the world worked in teams mentored by Vitalik Buterin, the young founder of Ethereum and one of the most influential figures in the world of technology.
The idea behind it is simple, Banco Sabadell seeks to establish co-creation synergies between technology start-ups and enterprises from the Fintech, Insurtech, Legaltech and Cleantech segments. Companies that took part in this Hackathon include Microsoft, Zurich, Roca Junyent, Endesa, and the joint venture Banco Sabadell/Zurich.
And there many more examples of successful Hackathons. If you know some, feel free to share them in the comments section below!
And here, I give you some websites, where you can find upcoming Hackathons in Spain.
So what is a Hackathon?
Initially, the word Hackathon comes from the word Marathon (a long or difficult activity in a short period) and Hack, here meant as exploratory programming.
Well, during a Hackathon, you spend a short period of time, usually between 24-48h (can go up to a week), building, creating and delivering a product. The idea is to collaboratively code in an extreme manner, to start from scratch and end with a working prototype. It’s often a sort of competition, where teams of programmers, developers, designers and project managers come together to design & build a nice product, a software project.
Originally, it started in the open source community and today is very common among programmers. You can find all sorts of Hackathons, some are mainly intended for educational matters, other for social, and others are basically to create a software. Very often, businesses use it as a chance to get creative ideas by their employees, some sort of prototype that will be low cost at the end of the day.
During those events, people meetup to face different real life problems. You could find Hackathons that have a theme assigned and you have other ones where there are no themes and you therefore pitch ideas and build on that. It’s a great opportunity to put together a large number of people to address all together a same problem and watch how ideas and results flow.
What is the structure of a Hackathon?
It usually all starts with an introduction about the event (about the topic if there is one) and then comes a kickoff where the participants will pitch product ideas and form teams based on interests and specific skills.
As mentioned earlier, a Hackathon can be of 24h but can go up to a week. So of course for shorter Hackathons, there is more pressure. Adding to that competition, you can quickly remember the exams periods at university. Work, work, work, drink coffee, have a quick bite, drink some redbull, sleep very few hours, work more, etc. At least that’s what my exams period looked like!
After the work being done, teams will show their product to others. It’s not always the case, but quite often, you will have a jury that will be looking at the demos of products and will be in charge of choosing a winner team that will get a prize.
Still not 100% convincend that you should participate in a Hackathon? Well wait till you read about the benefits.
What are the benefits of Hackathons?
Meet new people
It’s a great opportunity to get to know others that have the same interests as you and that care about the same technologies. Basically it’s a place where you get the chance to work and collaborate on projects with like minded people. I won’t go over the benefits of making new connections and networking, but a Hackathon is definitely the right place for that.
Team Collaboration
You are put in a situation where you work intensely with those new people you meet, for many consecutive hours in a short period of time, making it all quite intense. Everyone is working towards the same goal. You very often create strong bonds, learn from other’s strengths and learn how to work with a team that you don’t already know and with who you’ve never worked before, where high communication skills will be key.
Add value to your CV
This is a great add up to your CV: you will be getting some real tech experience and you can win prizes. People in the field know that during a Hackathon you increase your knowledge and gain team work experience. It Shows a lot about your personality, a proof that you are a person that takes initiative, seeking to have a deeper knowledge and that enjoys challenges.Innovation
Problem solving environments encourage the development of new ideas. You work with people that come from different fields, with different ideas and interest, all working together to solve the same problem, each one adding his own input. The fact that we are restricted with time increases adrenaline and makes it much more productive.Employer branding
If you host the event in your offices, people with talent in the industry will get to know your company and will meet your employees, making it possible for them to see how your team works and the skills they have.Recruiting & finding talent
During the project, in a way, you can see it as if you were testing candidates and identifying new talent for your teams. Do you see any cultural fit? Something you don’t always get to see during an job interview. Here, you can really see how people work in action, how they manage a situation, how fast they are, how productive, etc. So yes, let’s just say that it’s a very efficient way to find talent.Creating a new product
The main idea is to solve a problem by building a product. So you end up with a prototype of what could be your next product! And if not, you at least no what worked out and what didn’t.Personal satisfaction
You’re having fun building new things and the feeling is quite rewarding. You gain the respect of others for the job that is done and you participate in the advancement of technology.
A few tips for a good Hackathon
The pitch is so important!
A lot of people think that this part is not that important. They’re wrong! You need to be able to sell your idea, fast. I mean again, it all depends of the reason why you’re in a Hachathon. If you’re here to win then you should definitely think about the pitch. If you’re only here to have fun and don’t really care about winning (which is also ok), then it’s another story.
The audience, your judges, will be expecting an amazing presentation with a person that is totally confident about his product. Be short & concise, repeat your idea, look at them in the eyes and go for it! Just be prepared.Work with the best
Your team is part of your success. You should be strategic and work with people with different skills & different backgrounds, a bit of everything, different perspectives. If you’ve got a good idea, pitch it in the beginning of the Hackathon and explain who you are looking for and the project’s requirements so you can find the right people to work with.It’s not enough to be “cool”
You can have the greatest product with amazing features, but if it’s not helping a situation then there is no interest for others to invest in it. Keep that in mind.Come prepared
Another recommendation would be to do your research, read documents and understand the libraries & technologies you’re going to use. No need to loose that time during the Hackathon! You can also be prepared by having a template already done for your presentation, having a pillow, a blanket, a bottle of water and more!Be realistic
Its obviously good to have big ideas, but it’s very important to be realistic with your expectations & objectives. In only 24-48 h, you can’t really believe that you will have the end product. So focus on value, focus in delivering a MVP. Don’t spend all your time planning something unrealistic and ending up delivering almost nothing!
By now, you should be convinced to try out a Hackathon. Or at least, you should understand why it can be really interesting for some.
If you enjoyed this, you might like…
How to become a software developer?
The career path of a software developer?
Have you ever heard of a Hackathon? In the software development world, it’s a buzzword.
A hackathon is a sprint-like event in which developers and others involved in software development, including designers, project managers, and others, collaborate intensively on innovative projects during several days, normally between a day and a week. In most of the cases, a hackathon is organized to create something new, or to solve a particular problem. And today, I would like to show you some interesting Hackathon projects created by leading companies around the world.
Hackathons gaining popularity as innovation vehicle
To be honest, Hackathons have become a must these days, companies consider then in terms of innovation encouragement and talents development.
Hackathons are also adopted as the normal internal business activity, involving own employees to foster innovation and creative problem solving which go beyond traditional business and IT transformation.
Hackathon projects can inspire a concerted amount of development effort on a focused project for a short period of time and can increase attention to a critical issue. For people who need motivation and hope in their business, hackathon projects can create this sense of possibility. It can also help to find unexpected internal resources to foster digital innovation.
The nature of innovation has changed in recent years and today is characterized more by speed, flexibility, and openness. When we talk about big companies, collaborating with different departments, especially with IT, can be an issue. And a fast solution is like a dream, which never comes true. But, according to Fast company, as corporations start to embrace the idea of software-first future, they start adopting hackathons for everything from R&D and product roadmap to talent retention. For Fortune 500s, it’s more than just an event, it is a change initiative.
For example, during the past few years, Capital One has run internal hackathons for a variety of internal innovation, such as building prototypes, pitching ideas to senior business and technology leaders, creating new products, introducing new capabilities, and adopting new solutions. It is a great way to help enable a maker culture that is required in a modern company.
Another example is Hasbro, which a few years ago held a hackathon where 150 developers came and developed 45 products, equivalent to billions of dollars in traditional R&D ( source: Fast company).
As for the traditional automobile industries, they are using hackathons as a means of creating in-car apps and safety features, according to the hackathon organizers. Chevrolet offered eyes-free 4G LTE integration data with AT&T to allow hackers to create apps for the vehicle’s safety while Ford has experimented with hackathons for social driving apps. And Edmunds.com has been teaming with Fortune 500 companies for invite-only hackathons called Hackamotive, where a variety of people get to hack the car-shopping experience using its vast auto data.
And I should say, it is not always just about technology. It’s about how you can implement it, how you can work as a team, how you can solve problems, how you can work with shifting environments, etc.
Why do big companies invest in hackathon projects
1.Seeing the problem from different perspective
You actually learn by doing, learn by watching how other people solve problems. There is always more than just one solution to a problem and this is a great opportunity to see different approaches to the same problem.
2. Sense of accomplishment
How often teams start a project and never finished it? Or thought about something, but never tried it out? A team, especially in big companies, become exhausted of that “never-ending” tasks. Sometimes people need to work on something that gives immediate results. It helps to increase motivation and proactivity.
3. New talents, new teams
A Hackathon is a perfect place for both extroverts and introverts to foster relationships and improve soft skills while engaging in something they have a shared and growing interest in.
4. Innovation
Hackathon projects are a ground for new ideas. They create a uniquely productive atmosphere that forces participants to distill their visionary concepts down to actionable solutions.
5. Collaboration environment
Hackathons build a bridge between developers and marketing people. Hackathon projects help establish two-way conversations between those that develop the technology and the people that use them. This feedback loop increases efficiency and productivity, increases motivation and makes both teams understand each other better.
6. Soft skills enhancement
A good professional is recognized not for his hard skills, but for the combination of hard and soft skills. And hackathon environment is absolutely the perfect place to foster those skills.
Hackathon projects by big international companies
Paypal
Fast company says, that PayPal hosts Hackathons around the world. The company hosted Battle Hacks in 14 cities around the world, calling on the most talented developers to work for 24 hours to create something magical that incorporates the PayPal API and solves a local problem. For example, one of the top projects of these hackathons was an app to help puppies in shelters, connecting users with dogs available for adoption and allowing donors to use PayPal to contribute money towards vaccinations and vet treatments.
Foursquare
Foursquare notably helds large and global hackathons, in which over 500 developers at over 30 sites around the world competed to create applications using the Foursquare API. According to Techcrunch, one of the top projects was “Plan Your Next Trip”, which uses the Foursquare API to help you plan out your upcoming 2-day trip to any city in the world using the recommendations from Foursquare’s “Explore” feature.
Banco Sabadell
Several years ago Banco Sabadell started to organize Instant Banking Hack Days, Banco Sabadell’s hackathon, to boost digital innovation in the financial sector with the collaboration of Mobile World Capital Barcelona. They gather a large number of programmers in order to generate new ideas and applications. The participants in the Instant Banking Hack Day work on creating new web and mobile applications to enhance the direct experience of users in four aspects: means of payment, a transformation of customer service, the Internet of things and contextual and predictive services. For more than 30 hours, 23 teams built fintech apps and software at Banco Sabadell’s hackathon. It took place in Barcelona and Banco Sabadell has become one of the most tech-friendly banks in Spain. Not only it offers access to an API for developers to build apps on top of it, but it also runs the BStartup 10 startup program and hackathons for fintech projects. The winners of the Instant Banking Hack Day were:
- Wallabe: a social banking concept that allowed Banco Sabadell be part of the sharing economy. The app let users withdraw money anywhere and at anytime using smartphones.
- Quipu: online invoicing software for startups and freelancers. The company already existed prior to the event, but the team developed Quipu Ripae there, an extension that integrates with Sabadell’s API.
- Investcity: the project tried to establish a link between financial products and games, allowing users to better understand how the financial industry works and to buy and sell shares applying gamification to the process.
As part of 4YFN, Banco Sabadell held Hackathon dedicated to the translation of business rules in Smart Contracts into Blockchain, the revolutionary new technology which allows data to be transferred in a simpler and more secure way. Hackers and developers from all over the world worked in teams mentored by Vitalik Buterin, the young founder of Ethereum and one of the most influential figures in the world of technology.
The idea behind it is simple, Banco Sabadell seeks to establish co-creation synergies between technology start-ups and enterprises from the Fintech, Insurtech, Legaltech and Cleantech segments. Companies that took part in this Hackathon include Microsoft, Zurich, Roca Junyent, Endesa, and the joint venture Banco Sabadell/Zurich.
And there many more examples of successful Hackathons. If you know some, feel free to share them in the comments section below!
And here, I give you some websites, where you can find upcoming Hackathons in Spain.
- https://www.hackathon.com/city/spain/barcelona
- https://www.hackerearth.com/sprints/l/city/hackathons-barcelona/
- https://hackathonspain.com/calendario/
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