Event Length

Hackathons can last anything from one to seven days. The 24- or 48-hour format is the most common one, including the weekend.

The key to the right length of the hackathon is to make it long enough so that actual ideas and prototypes can be developed while keeping the event short enough to attract the target audience.

• 24-hour hackathons are appealing to younger professionals, but less so to professionals with families
• Longer hackathons are harder to organize and are more costly, but participants have more time to produce robust ideas and prototypes
• External) Hackathons are typically held over a weekend to prevent people from missing work/school

Size & Participants

Hackathons work for any number of participants. They typically range between 30 to 1,000 participants depending on the format, target audience, and topic.

The participants are the secret sauce. Without them, a hackathon wouldn’t be possible.

• Choose the target audience based on the theme/topic of the hackathon.
• Involve people who are excited about being part of the experience.
• The teams will benefit from diversity of thought.
• Hackathon teams are always self-organizing. They decide how they want to approach the challenge and manage their time.
• The teams can either form before or at the hackathon.
• The ideal size for a hackathon team is between 4 to 7 people.

Format

• Online
• In-person
• Hybrid of online & in-person
• External
• Internal
• Hybrid of external & internal

Theme

Hackathons have a theme or domain, often specified by a sub-theme or specific challenge statement. For example, e.X.Hack (Employee Experience Hackathon) is the theme, and redesigning the pre- and onboarding experience for new hires can be the more focused challenge statement.

A theme should get participants excited about the hackathon. People want to build stuff that is exciting, that matters, that gets used, and that gets noticed. Try testing your theme against that. If it holds up, run some rapid testing with a few potential participants before committing to a theme.

Here are some examples:

• Policy focused: Develop ideas for creative work arrangements after COVID
• Business model focused: Develop a business model to make learning initiatives self-sustaining
• Communication focused: Create communication hub to support Agile transformation journey
• Data jams: Analyze HR data and produce insights around diversity, equity, and inclusion
• Employee focused: Design the career pathing model of the future
• Marketing focused: Create a playbook for impactful storytelling by HR professionals
• Software focused: Build an informative app for an engaging pre- and onboarding experience
• Software focused: Build a marketplace for learning and knowledge sharing

In addition to an inspiring theme, a hackathon needs a well-defined problem statement, as well as some guiding questions and additional resources (if applicable). It provides focus to the teams and ensures they are working on the right problems and guarantees the solutions are designed with the right end-users in mind.

It is important to point out that it is challenging to solve highly complex problems in the span of a hackathon. The hackathon is usually just one step in a longer redesign or innovation process. However, the hackathon is a very powerful instrument for rapid ideation and prototyping. Many ideas and projects generated during a hackathon find a way to incorporate themselves into the business over time.

Budget

Even though the money spend on hackathons is well invested, they are not cheap to host.

Against expectations, larger-size events tend to have higher average per-person costs due to higher expenditures for travel costs, security, facilities, promotional efforts, and the need for an event/production company.

Here are some reference budgets for in-person hackathons:

• 30 participants: US$ 2,000 – US$ 5,000
• 50 participants: US$ 5,000 – US$ 12,000
• 200 participants: US$ 20,000 – US$ 40,000
• 500 participants: US$ 50,000 – US$ 100,000
• 1,000 participants: US$ 200,000 – US$ 250,000

It is important to make a budget for your hackathon. Here are some typical high-level spending categories to consider:

• Venue and security
• Staffing (facilitators, volunteers, judges)
• Catering & celebration
• Promotion, signage, and branding
• Swag & Prizes
• Miscellaneous – from nametags and lanyards to extension cords and banners
• Event/Production Company
• Speakers
• Travel & Expenses
• Emergency fund