Managing a NESCent hackathon

Preconditions

A funded budget, a hackathon plan with a scope, and a roster of participants.

Roles involved

Facilitators, Trainers, Support staff.

Outputs

Execution of hackathon plan, including travel and event logistics, resulting in tangible outputs.

Process

Travel arrangements

Travel arrangements begin at least 5 weeks before the event. Participants are sent instructions to arrange travel and lodging as soon as possible, following any guidelines to ensure reimbursement.

Pre-event engagement

In the 2 weeks before the event, organizers create opportunities for participants to communicate in a common forum (email list, issue tracker, teleconference). The purpose is to exchange knowledge and ideas, build community, identify training needs, and introduce supportive technologies.

Planning for Day 1 training

The organizers recruit individuals to provide instruction on topics they identify. The focus is on filling gaps in knowledge to ensure success of the hackathon, including scientific and technical knowledge, and the use of supportive technologies chosen for the event.

Day 1 Facilitation

The activities of day 1 must be orchestrated carefully. In a room full of 30 people who do not know each other well, activities that appear simple (e.g., introductions) can go wrong in ways that waste valuable time and drain energy. The success of Day 1 depends both on the months of preparation that brought together a group of people to work on a topic, and on effective facilitation.

• Opening - Welcome participants, thank sponsors, reiterate the scope and aims, describe the schedule, and introduce facilitators. Allow 10 minutes.
• Introductions - Ask participants to give name, affiliation, and a sentence about the special skills or knowledge they are bringing to the event. Keep introductions short, allowing no more than 10 minutes for 30 people.
• Presentations - Introduce designated presenters, who provide instruction and respond to questions. Allow from 1 to 3 hours.
• Facilitated open discussion - The purpose is to identify opportunities and challenges, and discuss promising ideas. This discussion is the first stage in the development of team projects. Discussion ends when the sense of the room is that there are enough technically feasible, in-scope ideas to provide opportunities for everyone. Facilitators begin by reiterating the scope of the hackathon, and then invite comments that pose important challenges, or suggest projects. Facilitators steer the discussion away from implementation details: once it has been determined that an idea is technically feasible, no further discussion of implementation choices is needed. If facilitators sense that key topics remain un-discussed, or that a block of people is going to have trouble fitting in, they should prompt for broader participation to avoid a subsequent failure in team coalescence. Many people are sensitive to criticism of ideas, and are easily silenced or intimidated, even by responses that are not meant to be personal or intimidating. Facilitators may wish to provide guidance on asking rather than judging or criticizing, e.g. rather than responding to an idea with “this won’t work because of X”, ask the question “how do we work around X?”; rather than saying “nobody will use this” ask “what’s the intended user-base for this?”; rather than saying “that isn’t in scope”, ask “how do you align that with the scope?”. Allow 60 to 120 minutes.
• Break - Participants intending to make a pitch need a few moments to collect their thoughts. Allow 15 minutes.
• Pitching - This is the second stage in development of team projects. The goal is to ensure each participant understands each idea. The facilitator invites champions to present a pitch (concept, proposed approach, tangible outcomes) in less than 3 minutes. Participants are instructed to ask only information questions to understand the pitch and how it aligns with the scope: this is not a time for critique or discussion. Yet, some champions may abandon pitches at this stage. Allow 30 minutes.
• Team coalescence - This is the third stage in development of team projects. It ends when every participant is part of a team of 3 to 7 people. The facilitator provides initial instructions, and then steps aside. Champions are asked to create a poster and find a position in the room at least 8 feet from any other poster. Participants are instructed that team coalescence is a multi-way negotiation to ensure a productive fit. One person’s special skills may induce a change in the project to take advantage of those skills. Champions are instructed to welcome potential team members, and to be open to new directions. All participants are instructed to join the team that maximizes their contribution to the hackathon (if they can find no way to contribute, they must choose the project that maximizes their chances to learn). This means that champions may choose to abandon a pitch to join another project. Facilitators may intervene to help novice participants, and to interrupt technical discussions that interfere with being welcoming to newcomers. Allow 30 to 75 minutes.
• Team plan, optional report-out and work sessions - Facilitators instruct teams to break out to separate areas where they will develop and commit to an initial project plan that specifies tangible outcomes and approach. This is the last stage in forming a hackathon team, and it may be done as a continuation of the previous stage. Allow 20 minutes. If time allows, teams may begin work. Facilitators may choose to end the day by re-convening everyone to hear brief team reports (allow 20 minutes).

Days 2 and later

Except on the last day, participants convene in mid-afternoon to hear teams report on accomplishments and challenges. Facilitators limit discussion to practical topics of broad interest, encourage teams with common problems to work together, encourage stalled teams to change tactics, and remind participants to complete tangible outcomes and document their accomplishments before the hackathon ends, because they likely will not work on this when they return to their “day jobs”.

Wrap-up

Participants convene to hear final team reports and discuss issues of broad interest, including opportunities and plans for follow-up.