Recruiting for a NESCent hackathon

Preconditions

A team of organizers committed to executing the existing hackathon plan for outreach and recruitment.

Roles involved

Organizers

Outputs

A roster of prospective participants committed to attending the event.

Process

• Event publicity - The organizers delegate one or more of their members to disseminate announcements with information on the location, date and theme of the hackathon. Text developed for this may be re-used in recruitment. Advertising the event well in advance, before the call for applications, is helpful in getting it “on the radar” of potential applicants.
• Application form - Guided by their recruitment plan, organizers make an online application form. This requires a design-implement-evaluate-revise workflow that cannot be done at a single meeting. For the NESCent model we recommend that the form request:
  • Statement of interest - a brief narrative responsive to the hackathon’s scope, indicating what the applicant hopes to achieve by participating.
  • Statement of qualification - a brief narrative responsive to the hackathon’s scope, describing relevant skills and knowledge, and making verifiable references to accomplishments (e.g., a link to a code repo or a paper).
  • Open-source commitment - an acknowledgement that all hackathon products are expected to be open source.
  • Full attendance commitment - an acknowledgement that the applicant is available and intends to attend the entire event from start to finish.
  • Diversity information - gender and status as underrepresented minority.
  • Location - the origin of travel to the event (for purposes of budgeting)
  • Travel support - support available from other sources for travel, meals, or lodging (for purposes of budgeting).
• Open call - The organizers draft an open call for participation using welcoming language. The open call is disseminated in venues that reach the target community at least 3 weeks before the application deadline, and is subsequently re-issued one or two times.
• Direct recruitment and invited applications - The organizers may recruit specific individuals to participate, either by reserving them a seat, or by inviting them personally to apply (we prefer the latter). This approach can be used both to ensure that certain technologies or projects are represented at the hackathon, and as part of a strategy to improve diversity.
• Application review - The organizing team assigns each member a set of applications to review, such that each applicant receives 3 reviews. Organizers read an application, assign an expected contribution score from 1 (participation is unlikely to augment success of the event) to 3 (participation will surely augment success), and make a brief comment explaining the score. This can be done in a spreadsheet (e.g., in a Google spreadsheet linked to the online application form). Applicants are then ranked by their average score.
• Finalizing a roster - The organizing team reserves an extended block of time (1.5 to 2 hours) to decide on a roster based on the ranking of applicants, the budget, and any other criteria they wish to apply. An obvious starting point is to order the applicants by rank, and designate how much travel support may be offered to each one, working down the list until the travel money runs out (this can be automated using a spreadsheet calculation). The organizers may then adjust this initial roster to improve the composition of the group with respect to skills, aims, or diversity. The organizers may wish to identify additional applicants to be invited if someone declines an invitation. Applicants to be invited are contacted and urged to respond within a week. Finalizing the roster may take 2 weeks. The end result is a list of people definitely committed to attend the event, with a plan to support their expenses.