Karbon’s first hackathon (the what, why and how)
When people hear the word ‘hackathon’, it can generate a lot of emotions. Most of the time, people see them as highly technical events involving only software engineers. But they are so much more than that.
Running a hackathon is a great way to bring together a diverse group of people and enable them to hyper-focus on providing real solutions to real problems.
When we ran our first hackathon at Karbon in December 2021, there were certainly a number of people across our global team asking questions like:
“What on earth is this about?”
“How can we do this during such a busy time?”
“Isn’t this just for coders?”
These are all fair questions. As the organizer, it was my job to let our team know that hackathons aren’t static—they can be planned and organized to suit any industry, team, and culture.
What is a hackathon?
Hackathons are short collaborative competition events for an organization to develop solutions to specific problems or challenges. These problems or challenges are often referred to as the theme of the hackathon.
They’re designed to last only a few days for several reasons:
To allow more flexibility across team members’ schedules
To minimize impact on the business
To encourage teams to hyper-focus on a single issue
As such, the solutions that are developed are often more like prototypes than fully-complete outcomes. While often the outcome of a hackathon is a digital solution created by software engineers and software development teams, a lot of modern hackathons are actually starting to focus much more on highly-developed conceptual solutions, particularly where teams include non-technical members.
https://karbonhq.wistia.com/medias/rfpkzi1v51?embedType=iframe&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=640I’ve been running hackathons since 2015, and each time, I have always been amazed by the fantastic ideas generated, the energy that is displayed, and the sheer quality of the end products. On top of that, participants are able to meet and work with colleagues from different departments and even countries, which is a huge boost to company culture.
Plus, many ideas and prototypes generated through the hackathons actually end up being further-developed and implemented as fully functional features.
G2.com
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