from Hacker News

Re-Inventing the Hackathon

by priley on 9/16/13, 4:18 PM with 37 comments

  • by binarymax on 9/16/13, 4:58 PM

    Mandatory demos. Banning of slide decks.

    Thank you!

    I had the pleasure of attending AngelHack london in April, and it was amazing. Keep up the great work!

  • by gkoberger on 9/16/13, 4:35 PM

    I've been to a number of hackathons, and AngelHack is by far the best run. The team does a great job, the locations+judges+sponsors are good, and they're usually cheap/free developers and designers. Can't wait to see what AppHACK is like.

  • by wavesounds on 9/16/13, 9:43 PM

    "Making money from the idea will not be a factor. Winners will be audited before winning to ensure hacks were created during the weekend."

    This is great! The last angelhack I went to was the exact opposite and it was pretty demoralizing getting a bunch of negative feedback from VC-ish judges even though it was 100% working and 100% built from scratch by myself in 24hrs (which was blatantly obvious most weren't via simple Google search) and it looked good and was using pretty advanced real time web technology[1]. It actually kinda bummed me out on hackathons for a while.

    [1] Heres the app if you're interested http://whereyouat.meteor.com

  • by saryant on 9/16/13, 9:42 PM

    I went to AngelHack Austin earlier this year and I thought there were a number of things that could be improved upon. The group I went with (all devs) had a terrible time. Sounds like they've realized this too.

    At the ATX event, there were no demos. Not even a public presentation to the rest of the participants, we were just grilled in a closed-room session by their panel on a bunch of business questions.

    The only way to get a T-Shirt was to listen to a sales pitch by one of their sponsors.

    Everyone was absolutely crammed in their space. I really hope they find a new venue for Austin.

    Maybe this event just went poorly but everyone I went with was really soured on AngelHack after that.

  • by gailees on 9/16/13, 5:44 PM

    Not going to lie, I've been to almost two dozen hackathons, and this right here is where they are headed. Greg Gopman and co. are doing it right.

  • by jlees on 9/16/13, 5:57 PM

    Love the focus on demos and code reviews; many 'hackathons' are becoming anything but. Wish the through-the-night part would change, though, I feel that aspect makes these events less accessible.

    The bootcamp aspect is an interesting one. Would you accept apps that were built in HTML/JS and PhoneGapped? I've seen that approach used more and more at hackathons, due to speed. Android/iOS is definitely doable (I've built both at hackathons/startup weekends), but for someone completely new to the platform, it'll be slower. So allowing skeleton apps, templates and frameworks could even the playing field a little.

  • by songzme on 9/16/13, 6:30 PM

    Here is their challenge: bmljZSBkZWNvZGluZyB5b3VuZyBwYWRhd2FuIFVzZSB5b3UgbXVzdCBsZWFybmVyIGZyZWUgdGlja2V0IGNvZGU6IEhBQ0taSUxMQQ==

    Reward, a coupon code that you can apply for a free ticket to an angelhack hackathon.

  • by brianfryer on 9/16/13, 8:31 PM

    I've volunteered at Lean Startup Weekend a number of times, am currently a Hackstar at Techstars first Austin-based program, and have been working in-and-out of Capital Factory with a number of its startups since before it opened.

    As such, I'm super excited to see how this event differs in practice and have already signed up to volunteer.

  • by nitinalabur on 9/16/13, 5:32 PM

    No slides! finally!!!!!

  • by solchea on 9/16/13, 7:19 PM

    This is definitely taking hackathons in the right direction - and as someone who has attended AngelHack before, I like the focus on building something cool vs. focusing on slides/market potential.

  • by alexs_mx on 9/16/13, 5:53 PM

    I think 24 Hrs hack beats 48 hrs of which 20 are just recovering from bad sleep and 1 making keynote keynote of a no_demo "bussiness"

  • by Intimatik on 9/16/13, 5:51 PM

    I'm waiting AppHack in Moscow! AngelHack hackathon was really awesome!

  • by sara_gozalo on 9/16/13, 11:39 PM

    I was in AngelHack last year and it was great! Thanks a lot!!

  • by iancarroll on 9/16/13, 6:21 PM

    Their free ticket thing was really easy. I mean, come on.

  • by jbeard4 on 9/16/13, 7:23 PM

    I hope they come to Toronto.

  • by rismay on 9/16/13, 9:07 PM

    I like the old logo better!

  • by Dean-Collins on 9/16/13, 10:24 PM

    sounds like every other hackathon.....