Hackathons are dead. Long live hackathons!

Regular hackathons* are coding competitions that last 24 to 72 hours. They are used to generate innovative solutions in many areas, such as mobility, energy, unemployment, climate change, industry, payment, supply chain, education, health or sports.

Despite the enthusiasm they generate, a growing number of hackathon stakeholders (participants, organizers, sponsors, mentors, jurys) voice their criticism towards these events. Some companies even stopped sponsoring or launching hackathons because of their limited outcomes. Let's figure out the reasons of this demise.

*Don't know what is a hackathon and what are their use? This infographic will help!

5 reasons why hackathons are dead

1. They have a limited reach.

Each regular hackathon has to cope with geographical and time limitations. As an organizer, you cannot reach potential participants outside of the boundaries of your city, and those who won't be in town during the given weekend. As a participant, it is also frustrating not to be able to attend this unique hackathon about your favorite topic because it is taking place on the other side of the country, or on a weekend for which you already have plans.

2. It's hard not to reinvent the wheel.

24 to 72 hours is a really short unrealistic amount of time to come up with innovative original solutions. Without enough time to do proper research, participants recycle déjà-vu ideas without even knowing it. The prototypes may be working during the demo but jurys and sponsors have to bear in mind that:

• What you’ve seen during the demo is not necessarily real. I’ve seen bluffing mock-ups during final pitches, with no real code behind. 
• Even if the prototype is real, it has been executed in such a hurry that you’d need to rewrite the entire code anyway. 
• Too often, the social utility of the solution is not strong enough. 

3. Teams tend to lack diversity.

There is a natural tendency to team-up with like-minded people, especially when you attend a hackathon and have very little time to form teams. It’s difficult to admit, but teams of clones tend to underperform, especially teams that are only made of coders.

After 6 years organizing hundreds of hackathons, we’ve seen that only 16% of the teams who are made of only engineers and programmers make it to the top 3.

So this means that hackathons for coders only are passé. Don’t get me wrong, coders and techies are an incredible asset for the teams. It’s just that having only coders work together in closed circuit is not the best way to generate winning solutions. 

4. The costs are high.

For sponsors and organizers, hosting and catering for dozens, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of participants is very costly. Between the rental of a large space to accommodate everyone (participants, mentors, juries, sponsor company employees, the press, etc.), the servers, a strong internet and WiFi, food, beverages, photographers, filming crew, prizes for the winners... you’re looking at a minimum of a 150,000 USD budget for a hackathon with 300 attendees. 

For participants, hackathons can also be a relatively big investment when you take into account the time they spend on premises, their travel expenses to get to the location, the accommodation if they're not living in the area, not to mention sleep deprivation and its toll.

5. The conversion rates are low.

Be aware that all participants are not necessarily here to compete.

In average, 50% of participants of regular hackathons drop out and do not deliver any solution by the end of the 48 hours.

The lack of time and the pressure are not the only reasons. Some people only attend hackathons in order to expand their network, socialize, sell their products or services, recruit programmers, get mentorship, or eat for free (sic!).

There is another (better) way

Despite their limits, hackathons are still a great way to accelerate innovation -- some would even say change the world. Just like any methodology, they just need some adjustments to reveal their full potential.

1. Several steps of the hackathon can be held online.

Team formation and ideation are two steps that are both critical and time-consuming. Participants who show up alone at hackathons spend 10% of their time finding team members, with little guarantee that it will be a good fit. Once they have formed a team, they spend at least 30% of their time on ideation. Which leaves them less than 60% of their time for execution and pitch preparation.

The trick here is to have the competition begin online so that participants can form teams and ideate prior to the hackathon.

To do so, you need to make sure you have the right tools. The following article gives more details about the must-have and the nice-to-have features for a good hackathon platform: Physical or online? How to make your hackathons a success.

With the right online tool, the timeline of the hackathon could then be:

Step 1. Pre-hackathon = Team formation and ideation (1 month)

Step 2. Hackathon = Execution and pitch preparation (24, 48, or 72 hours)

2. Giving more time to participants pays off.

Some might think that having a hackathon start online is not fair because the people who register the earliest get more time to work on their projects, as opposed to the last-minute registered participants. But if you go back to the core purpose of hackathons --which is finding an innovative solution to a given problem -- then all that matters is the quality of the projects.

Giving more time to participants not only increases the quality of the projects, but it also means that you can reach more people, because the time constraint is much looser. Participants can start the hackathon from the comfort of their home, work remotely with their team, and contribute aside from their studies or work.

Read also: [Infographic] The 5 advantages of online-to-offline hackathons

3. You have to encourage team diversity.

During a hackathon, teams are like small temporary startups. McKinsey's 2015 report on "Why Diversity Matters" shows that:

• 15% of gender-diverse companies are more likely to outperform
• 35% of ethnically-diverse companies are more likely to outperform

And we see this everyday during hackathons. The more ethnically- and gender-diverse the team is, the higher their chances are to win.

Also, the more skills the team has, the better. That is why opening the hackathon to non-coders is key. Hackathons have to evolve towards open innovation competitions, instead of coding competitions, in order to be more impactful. We have always encouraged hackathon organizers to be as open as possible in terms of qualification criteria because we know that coding skills do not make everything.

We've seen a team of two 18-year old agronomy students win a finance hackathon sponsored by a big European bank.

So, how can organizers encourage team diversity, without forcing it? They can use several tricks, such as granting more points to teams who have at least one female or male participant. One efficient method is to have a matching algorithm suggest participants potential team members based their skills, gender, and nationality.

Source : www.business.agorize.com/en/platform

4. Get more from your hackathon, with less money.

Launching a hackathon does not necessarily mean you have to organize a huge event with hundreds of people. Leveraging online selection tools can help organizers identify and select the most interesting projects. Thus, only the teams with the highest potential are invited for a physical event. If you watch Dragon's Den or Shark Tank, you get an idea of how hackathons can gain efficiency. Both TV shows use an online selection process and only invite the best teams at the studio.

Here is an example of the funnel methodology we roll-out to maximize the ROI of each of our hackathons:

This funnel process has helped decrease hackathon costs by 20%, while increasing their reach by 70%, and go from a 50% to an 80% conversion rate. Not to mention the increased quality of the final pitches.

How about you? Have you ever had mixed experiences as hackathon participant or organizer, and why? What are your tricks to create a better hackathon experience for all?

Keywords: #hackathon #hackathons #innovation #openinnovation #competition #coding #coder #programmer #diversity #platform #onlinehackathon #agorize