Hackathon feedback and ideas from my experience, hope it will help Devpost to strive, I really like it!
So, from my experience it is good for any hackathon:
- Have example ideals of what to build
- Have an example project or something similar, maybe even just empty "skeleton" to kick-start the development. Sometimes (I'm looking at you, all web3-crypto-nft hackathons) it's very non-obvious where to start and what can be built. The very good example was Google Flutter hackathon, but I understand that their format allowed to have the complete project. For other hackathons, a basic, even empty scaffold project that you can just copy and run, would be very useful. It is sometimes much easier to build something based on something you can run and check yourself.
- If the hackathon allows some already existing projects to be submitted, still, have some separate winner categories for new projects. I saw this with the Twitter hackathon, when people were upset that the winning projects were very established and old ones.
- If the hackathon allows to work in teams, especially bigger ones, have a separate category for solo creators. The idea, similar to the previous one, to "even" the chances, and make sure people are not dissuaded to participate because they can't compete with the big teams (with separate dev, designer etc), or with existing 1+ year old projects.
- Think about always defining some "original idea" or similar category. Idea is again, to give a chance smaller teams or less experienced users to try submitting something and having a chance to win. Polished execution is not always achievable for all people because of lack of experience, time etc.
- Always try to have a separate category for "community choice" or something similar. Might make sense to think about subcategories like "most likes", "most comments" etc. The idea is to have more active community participation, especially for online events. Sometimes people are very silent for the whole length of the hackathon.
- When presenting winners for online hackathons, it would be nice to try doing it in some kind of award-giving presentation, like it's done for in-person hackathons. I think it would be pleasant for participants, and more engaging than just going to the projects page and seeing the winners.
Thank you for your work, and hope you will be able to continue it!
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