Tired of hackathons that aren't diverse? There's a hack for that.

This past weekend I was in New York City for CODE2040's first alumni-led Hackathon, HACK2040.  The weekend-long event was hosted at CODE2040 partner Wieden+Kennedy's amazing downtown offices and consisted of some pretty awesome innovations by teams of high school and college students.

HACK2040 is a new hackathon series specifically focused on hacking solutions to challenges and opportunities around the changing demographics in the United States (the hackathon is called HACK2040 because 2040 is the year that people of color are projected to be the majority in this country). Given that, it's no surprise that a diverse crowd is drawn to this event.

But what I loved about HACK2040 is that so much of what the team who put on the hackathon did to create a welcoming environment for students of color makes a better hackathon environment for everyone -- meaning that any hackathon, regardless of the focus, can be more inclusive with a few easy, er, hacks.

CODE2040 Alum Amy Quispe (Fellows Program '12) wrote a great post that has been viewed more than 125,000 times about how she helped Carnegie Mellon throw a more inclusive hackathon. Some of her top tips include:

• Use the promotional materials to explain what a hackathon is
• Be explicit in stating that first timers are welcome to join
• Make the event about problem solving, not competition
• Make it easy for prospective and current participants to ask questions

In honor of this first CODE2040 alumni-led HACK2040, which Amy helped to put together, we asked her to share some updated tips with us. She wrote down some key thoughts that you can read here that included great advice like:

• Create a code of conduct
• Be clear about your diversity and inclusion goals for your event
• Make sure the judges are diverse

Her tips worked great for us, and I also loved seeing additional innovations this past weekend, like a diverse set of judging criteria and prizes. For example, a more typical category like "the most difficult technical hack" was one of the prizes, but so was "best use of mentors" -- a skill that is also super helpful in your career. 

Have you seen something work really well at a hackathon to create an inclusive environment and ensure that folks from all backgrounds have a good experience? Leave your tips in the comments or tweet me at twitter.com/laurawp.