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Ask HN: What about taking Hackathons online?

by jessor on 3/6/11, 8:18 AM with 8 comments

Living in a rural area I've never been to a hackathon or startup weekend. I realize those benefit massively from hackers being in one physical space with other fellow hackers, but I'm thinking about ways to take a hackathon online without losing too much momentum. Having seen Minecraft's notch stream entire coding sessions live I wonder if this could be a viable solution. I looked into it, there are good ways to stream a desktop (or parts of it) via justin.tv, even on linux systems.

Let's say we create a website that embends the desktops of all participants and their projects in a grid thus transporting some of this "woah, they're doing something, i should too" feeling. With regard to projects there are many possible ways to do it. One idea would be to make it a nonprofit hackathon where organizations could apply and teams or individual hackers could pick what they'd like (similar to random hacks of kindness), or just let startups do their own things.

But first I'd like to know if the online hackathon idea is even remotely interesting. Would you share (parts of) your desktop live for such an event? Do you think it's possible to create a momentum this way?

  • by JCB_K on 3/6/11, 9:58 AM

    I like the idea, but I don't think it would work. Let's look at the aspects of a Hackathon:

    - People might not like it, but part of hackathons is the social side: meeting hackers and other like-minded people. Meeting them online you can do anyday, wether it's on HN, Reddit, Stackoverflow or whatever else.

    - The woah, they're doing something, i should too" feeling. You can partially copy that using desktop streaming and that stuff, but still it's too easy to just walk away from it, when you're not around those people physically. For exactly the same reason as why people are so much ruder online than that they are in real life: you don't see the people on the other end. Introduce webcams, you might say, but still I don't think any virtual connection can fully replace the feeling of a Hackathon.

    -It's also way too easy to cheat. Fair enough, it's quite easy to cheat at Hackathons anyway, but again, people are ruder online than in real life, and thus more likely to cheat.

    Okay, it might turn out to be a nice little event for a bunch of people, but I don't think it'd come anywhere near a "real" Hackathon.

  • by petercooper on 3/6/11, 10:22 AM

    Make it simple, make it small. And just do it. If you can't persuade several people you know to take part, it probably wouldn't be a goer on a bigger level. Just do a small one, figure out the tech, see what works and what doesn't, and then bring it to us as something to take part in.

    It sounds great but it's edgy/new enough for you to need to do a small test run first to refine the idea. And you'll find it hard to sell without having the experience under your belt. It's one of those "meh, sounds weird" ideas that just needs some momentum before people will be won over, IMHO.

  • by devinj on 3/6/11, 9:10 AM

    I would share my desktop. I figure that the idea that somebody could be watching would be very motivating. And since the chances of someone actually watching are so slim, I wouldn't feel too embarrassed.

  • by wjr on 3/6/11, 3:38 PM

    Even though the idea seems a little crazy I think it`s possible to organize such a event.

    There are couple of hey things that have to be taken care of:

    -cheating ( by announcing a topic couple hours before event starts )

    -getting media sponsors ( preferably startups with API' )

    -presentations streamed ( justin.tv/ustream etc.)

    -progress written up ( like http://www.travisglines.com/web-coding/lets-make-a-twitter-c...)

    -possible prizes via AppSumo or similar venue

    I`ve been actually thinking about putting together such a event in the next couple of weeks.

    Since I`m launching a website in exactly that area soon, check it out in my profile.

  • by Grauwolf on 3/6/11, 8:23 AM

    While I like the idea and see the benefits I would feel uncomfortable with people watching over my shoulder while programming.

  • by kolinko on 3/6/11, 3:27 PM

    hm, imho it is not as fun as offline