Re-Inventing the Hackathon | Hacker News Reader

Re-Inventing the Hackathon

blog.angelhack.com

63 pointspriley37 comments

Mandatory demos. Banning of slide decks.

Thank you!

I had the pleasure of attending AngelHack london in April, and it was amazing. Keep up the great work!

Agreed. I'm definitely in favor of more demo (and hopefully less business plan).

I was at AngelHack London in April and ended up just doing a demo (of https://github.com/matt-williams/argolf) because I couldn't get my laptop connected to the projector.

Agreed. I've been at hackathons where 50% of teams just showed slides/mockups, a few had local server urls, and we were the only team demoing on a live URL.

I'm glad they're focusing even more on what you've actually built in a weekend vs what dreams you've spun.

Maybe, but don't slide decks give you the chance to sell what you've built? Maybe you need the time explain the bigger idea of what you're doing when during the hackathon you only completed 25% of it?

I've been to a number of hackathons, and AngelHack is by far the best run. The team does a great job, the locations+judges+sponsors are good, and they're usually cheap/free developers and designers. Can't wait to see what AppHACK is like.

"Making money from the idea will not be a factor. Winners will be audited before winning to ensure hacks were created during the weekend."

This is great! The last angelhack I went to was the exact opposite and it was pretty demoralizing getting a bunch of negative feedback from VC-ish judges even though it was 100% working and 100% built from scratch by myself in 24hrs (which was blatantly obvious most weren't via simple Google search) and it looked good and was using pretty advanced real time web technology[1]. It actually kinda bummed me out on hackathons for a while.

[1] Heres the app if you're interested http://whereyouat.meteor.com

I went to AngelHack Austin earlier this year and I thought there were a number of things that could be improved upon. The group I went with (all devs) had a terrible time. Sounds like they've realized this too.

At the ATX event, there were no demos. Not even a public presentation to the rest of the participants, we were just grilled in a closed-room session by their panel on a bunch of business questions.

The only way to get a T-Shirt was to listen to a sales pitch by one of their sponsors.

Everyone was absolutely crammed in their space. I really hope they find a new venue for Austin.

Maybe this event just went poorly but everyone I went with was really soured on AngelHack after that.

I keep hearing stories like yours, I'm not sure why people who have bad experienes at AngelHack don't share their stories more.

Their Austin event was pretty bad. We thought it would be developer oriented but then it was just a 48 hour long sales pitch. Based on the other comments I'm seeing here, maybe they just dropped the ball in Austin.

Yea... we had some problems with ATX last time. We're switching things up with a completely new organizing team and venue this time around. It's not easy to throw these big hacks, so I have to be a little forgiving with our first time organizers from past. That said, we will get it right and things in Austin will be awesome like they are in most other cities.

I understand. I ran a hackathon in San Antonio this summer and problems crop up where you least expect them. Definitely not an easy task.

After attending, I don't see how AngelHack can ever be successful in its current format. It's clearly not about the hacks. It's for the sponsors who want to recruit devs and investors/judges who want to find the next big idea.

Not going to lie, I've been to almost two dozen hackathons, and this right here is where they are headed. Greg Gopman and co. are doing it right.

Love the focus on demos and code reviews; many 'hackathons' are becoming anything but. Wish the through-the-night part would change, though, I feel that aspect makes these events less accessible.

The bootcamp aspect is an interesting one. Would you accept apps that were built in HTML/JS and PhoneGapped? I've seen that approach used more and more at hackathons, due to speed. Android/iOS is definitely doable (I've built both at hackathons/startup weekends), but for someone completely new to the platform, it'll be slower. So allowing skeleton apps, templates and frameworks could even the playing field a little.

Yea... we should definitely be considering teaching people how to utilize frameworks for languages they already know (PhoneGap, Blackberry OS, Appcelerator). We started with Android and iOS because at scale it's easier to find teachers for those than the others. It would be great if we could garner more support from PhoneGap, Appcelerator, Blackberry, etc

Here is their challenge: bmljZSBkZWNvZGluZyB5b3VuZyBwYWRhd2FuIFVzZSB5b3UgbXVzdCBsZWFybmVyIGZyZWUgdGlja2V0IGNvZGU6IEhBQ0taSUxMQQ==

Reward, a coupon code that you can apply for a free ticket to an angelhack hackathon.

Trailing == gives it away.

I saw the == and it looked so suspicious but I didn't know what it was from. That'll be burned in my brain from now on, though.

I've volunteered at Lean Startup Weekend a number of times, am currently a Hackstar at Techstars first Austin-based program, and have been working in-and-out of Capital Factory with a number of its startups since before it opened.

As such, I'm super excited to see how this event differs in practice and have already signed up to volunteer.

No slides! finally!!!!!

This is definitely taking hackathons in the right direction - and as someone who has attended AngelHack before, I like the focus on building something cool vs. focusing on slides/market potential.

I think 24 Hrs hack beats 48 hrs of which 20 are just recovering from bad sleep and 1 making keynote keynote of a no_demo "bussiness"

I'm waiting AppHack in Moscow! AngelHack hackathon was really awesome!

I was in AngelHack last year and it was great! Thanks a lot!!

Their free ticket thing was really easy. I mean, come on.

Really? I have no idea what they're even asking. Is it because I don't play video games? The context about mario and banging all night is greek to me.

The code they give looks a lot like my Balsamiq serial ;)

It's just a base64 encoded string.

Sorry... did I give it away? My bad.

I gave them something much harder to break, but I guess they wanted anything to be able to break it.

The point is that it's dead simple for a developer, but impossible for an "idea guy".

I hope they come to Toronto.

AngelHack has been to Toronto in the past; I'm not sure there was enough of a turnout to offset the costs of running it though.

That's disappointing. I'm relocating there next month. I guess I'll have to travel to NYC to participate.

The NYC hackathon was a good time, I'd recommend it:)

I like the old logo better!

sounds like every other hackathon.....

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