My Experience of Hosting an Online Hackathon

Overview

HackTheLib Logo

What is a Hackathon?

The Brainstorming Process

We had a team of 10 people, each of whom brought ideas together to make our event possible
  • What could be made: Many previous hackathons, due to current circumstances, had chosen to go with the COVID-19 theme, however, we decided on being all-inclusive and let all projects be submitted with no extra weight being given to COVID-19 themed projects.
  • How to prevent code-plagiarism: We wanted to ensure that the integrity of our hackathon was still fully intact and that no person would gain an unfair advantage.
  • The Submission Process: This is something I’ll deep dive into a bit later, but we had to discuss what is the best way for programmers to turn in their projects whether it be through Google Drive, Github, or Devpost.
  • Workshops: We were trying our best to emulate the in-person experience to an online environment so we realized that we would have to figure out a way to either have pre-recorded workshops or do some live.
  • Prizes: This was the easy part of hosting online as many gift cards for the winning teams/individuals can be sent out via email/text.

Website Design

We initially started to convert our old site to a more modern/responsive one for our online format
Our New Website Design

The Submission Process

  • Their Github Repository with all their code
  • A link to a YouTube Video in the ReadMe where participants explain the functionality of their project in 2–5 minutes
  • A Greeting to our Judges :)
  • #1: Google Drive: Participants submit the project code and a .mp4 file of the functionality of their video
  • #2: Github: Participants push their code through github and add a link to their video
  • #3: Devpost: The easiest way to facilitate the turn in of code, and was linked to the idea of using Github.
All Submissions would be facilitated through Devpost

Our Sponsors

Some of our Sponsors
  • Receive free merchandise to one’s home
  • Hear some great tips on the Software Engineering industry from leaders in the actual industry
  • Host Machine Learning workshops

The Actual Event

A Discord Server is where all the communication happened

Conclusion

Thank you to all those who participated! HackTheLib will be back soon!

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Student, Programmer, Producer, Editor, Leader. Always learning! Website: rayaansiddiqi.com

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