What Are Hackathons and How to Organize One?

What Are Hackathons and What’s the Easiest Way to Organize One?

Back in the 1970s and even into the ‘80s and ‘90s, being called a hacker in public wasn’t a good thing. Today, the word has come to mean something more positive. Although the negative form still persists—meaning a person who uses technical or social skill to break into a computer system—the positive version has become ubiquitous at tech companies: A highly skilled and intelligent computer programmer. 

It is from this more tender version of the word that the word hackathon was created—a portmanteau of hacker and marathon, an event of long duration and endurance. 

Hackathons are computer programming social events where a team—whether big or small—of “hackers” and other supporting people get together and work to upgrade a piece of computer software or to make an entirely new piece of software. 

The first hackathon

The first event to be officially called a hackathon was the OpenBSD Hackathon held in Calgary, Canada, on June 4, 1999. Between June 4 and June 6 of that year, ten developers were able to achieve an industry-first by integrating a particular piece of technology into the OpenBSD operating system. This proved the effectiveness of such a hackathon event. 

This was followed, days later, by the Java One Hackathon which had the purpose of writing Java programs for the Palm V. This achievement resulted in the Palm V stealing the show. 

The plotline repeats itself for future hackathons—a bunch of incredible programmers putting their heads together and achieving incredible software advances in a fraction of the time. 

The most popular hackathons of today

Fast-forward to the present day and we now find regularly scheduled hackathons that bring together programmers from all over the world. Some of the most popular hackathons are:

TechCrunch Disrupt

TechCrunch Disrupt is both a global conference and an international hackathon. It is held every year and has seen many of the world’s most widely known tech CEOs—Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, and others—appear on its stage long before these people were famous for the enormity of their tech achievements. 

Disrupt hosts multiple coding challenges throughout the event that hackers can participate in

Hack Zurich

Hack Zurich is Europe’s biggest hackathon and is held every year. The event takes place at the Technopark in—you guessed it—Zurich, Switzerland. Attendees get given a programming task in web, desktop, or mobile development and have 40 hours of a non-stop coding marathon to get it completed. 

Since 2020, the Hack Zurich hackathon has been held as a hybrid event. 

Facebook Hackathons

Facebook has held internal hackathons for years but recently started offering hackathon competitions to the public, and in 2020 delivered its first online-only hackathon. Programmers get given challenges and there are financial prizes for those who come up with the best solutions. 

HackMIT

HackMIT is one of the largest undergraduate hackathons in the world. It is held every year on the MIT campus and is open to students from any college or university, and from anywhere around the world. HackMIT consistently receives over 1,000 attendees to these hackathons every fall. The hackathon runs non-stop for 24 hours. 

How to easily organize your own hackathon

The beauty of computer software and open source is that any person or organization can contribute to it. It was this paradigm that gave us such game-changing software as WordPress, Linux, and Android. Open source projects can be begun by students in a dorm room, teenagers in a garage, or top-level CEOs and their software teams. 

Hackathons are an excellent way to get an open-source project off the ground. Unfortunately, the student in his or her dorm room will certainly not have the funds to organize an international hackathon which requires hiring out an event hall, purchasing computers, catering, and so on. 

That’s where the virtual hackathon comes in. For the first time, it is now possible for anyone to organize, promote, and run a virtual hackathon. Not only are the costs greatly reduced for the organizer, but anyone of any means can attend because they don’t need to pay for air tickets to fly from, say, Germany to Massachusetts for HackMIT. 

In fact, only completely virtual hackathons encompass the true spirit of open source which is to include everyone and to give anyone the ability to contribute to a project no matter their means. 

EventsX makes it easy to organize virtual hackathons

EventsX virtual hackathons run with the exact same quality as real-life events. A virtual event is not merely a video conference. It is a full-fledged event with attendee interaction and collaboration. 

Additionally, EventsX virtual hackathons allow for the creation of leaderboards to show which hackers have made the most progress on their tasks. 

Getting a virtual hackathon organized is as easy as signing up for an account and filling in your hackathon's details. EventsX also comes with ticketing and marketing tools to help you promote your virtual hackathon, and dozens of other built-in tools that let you manage every aspect of your hackathon so it runs smoothly from beginning to end.

To get started with EventsX virtual hackathons, sign up for a free account and create your first virtual hackathon absolutely free!