Learn how to run your own hackathons!

Hackathon
Starter-Kit

We want to help your organization drive innovation
by helping you to run effective hackathons

We partnered with events like

Planning is KEY

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Purpose

Understand your success criteria

Personnel

Appoint key players (stakeholders, project manager, and other points of contact) early on

Runway Time

What's the timeline for setting all this up?

Event Schedule

Identify what the event schedule and activities look like for the event

Activities

Trainings, Office hours
Speakers/Judges/Volunteer prep
Opening & Closing sessions

Duration

Determine length of the event (1 day or multiple day)
Determine length of each session

Order

Set timeline for all the activities (pre vs during)

Communications & Outreach
How will you communicate with your participants?

It's important to understand which type of audience you want to attract. This will help tailor your message during the outreach phase.

  • How will the organizers communicate with registered participants
  • How will other participants collaborate?

Event Setup

Identify all the logistics to be executed for a successful event

Registration

Design & Set up Website
Create Registration form

Virtual Hackathon Setup

Set up Teams instance
Create Teams and channel

In-person Venue Setup

Set up Room & Equipment

Technical Readiness

Prepare Lab environment

Hackathon Support

Setup a support email for participants to reach out if they are unable to join virtual platform

Post Event

Think about different ways to support & communicate with the participants. Especially, if the event had winners.

Winner(s)

Did the hackathon have a winner(s)? Will you offer monetary support?
Will you offer development resources?

Keep In Touch

Create programs for attendees to connect with other experts.

Checkout our blogs

Innovation demands you to be nimble and agile.
We share our learnings through these blogs and we hope they are helpful and give you more insight into why running a hackathon could help shift your organization into an innovation machine.

Hack-Culture

Driving innovation through culture
  • Why culture plays such a huge role in innovation and how running hackathons can help create that culture!

Why a hackathon?

Changing culture with hackathons
  • This article will show you why hackathon could be so important to build an innovative 'Hack' Culture!
Frequently asked questions

The rise of mobile devices transforms the way we consume information entirely and the world's most elevant channels such as Facebook.

A hackathon is a collaborative event that brings together different people to find solutions to a challenge. Participants brainstorm, collaborate, and develop solutions. The goal is to have a prototype or proof of concept ready by the end of the event.

Good hackathon solution comes down to the MVP. It is the Minimum number of features that you can demonstrate, to showcase your solution to the challenge. For e.g., it is not the everyday details like login screen, it is how can you show the application does in few screens and in few details as possible.

A hackathon is a fun way to engage lots of people within and outside your organization around a digital culture of change. Teams come together, at the line of business or at the global scale, from different roles, backgrounds, and departments to compete and create solutions that address a need.

While the main elements of hackathons are similar, these events come in many shapes and sizes. Within Microsoft, we have two categories; External and Internal hackathons