Given that this crypto renaissance movement is influenced by developers, creatives, and investors alike, it’s in the industry’s interest to experiment with hackathon formats. The tools we have today make it easier than ever to spin up a project, and we should leverage this for greater inclusion, which leads to better adoption.

I’d like to pry open the ideas about how to make these incredible interactive educational tools more effective, with hackers excited to join, learn, put in effort, and win great prizes. On the other side, I challenge sponsors to think more critically about interactions between their solutions/products and these events.

To better understand some paths forward, I'm first looking back to trace where our modern understandings come from.

‘Hack’ Background

Truthfully, ‘hacker’ as a concept has been alive long before the internet was invented…

Clever play was always ingrained, and to be identified as a ‘hacker’ was a badge of honor.

This term ‘hack’ originated on the campus of MIT in the ‘60s when programming students were blowing minds using cutting-edge computers and local networks in mischievous ways for on-campus pranks. Soon other universities and computer hobbyists adopted the term, and it grew to mean someone adept at using tools in creative new ways, and who typically retains an anti-establishment or free knowledge perspective.

OpenBSD holds the origins of the word ‘hackathon’, rooted in a no-frills, invite-only software event to collectively upgrade the IPv6 & IPSEC protocols as quickly as possible. A ChatGPT prompt provided a succinct definition of the word’s origins:

The term “hackathon” was coined in the late 1990s by Niels Provos, an OpenBSD programmer, and is a portmanteau of the words “hack” and “marathon.” Since its inception, hackathons have become popular among technology companies, universities, and other organizations as a way to bring together developers and other technology professionals to work on various projects.

Fast forward to 2005, and JotSpot, a Silicon Valley startup building a collaborative wiki tool (later acquired by Google) runs an internal exercise for all employees to spend one day tinkering on pet projects or learning a new tool during a work day. They call it a ‘hackathon’. The exercise was popularized by Yahoo the following year and subsequent years, with coding at the forefront, and later with employees contributing non-tech skills to prototypes.

And now, as ChatGPT pointed out, tech companies, universities, venture funds, and others have been using this as a way to either teach, seek creative solutions, or both. And thus far it has been doing a decent job, but they’ve become formulaic.

Hackathons Today - Tools for Collaborative Learning

Today, hackathons, game jams, and other computer programming extravaganzas get devs together to either solve a big problem, build something fast, or to try out new software or programs.

A few key functions can include a sandbox for devs to try new tools, a place to build ideas in a short amount of time, and learning tangible & intangible lessons (such as how to connect a front end to a web3 backend, or how to ship without being overly nit-picky). However much is left to luck in this structure, in terms of how the hackathon benefits the bounty-setters or even participants.

Anyone familiar with the blockchain hackathon circuit can point out a few or more flaws. Incentives and intentions are often not effectively aligning.

Bounty hunters game hackathon systems, often re-coding product concepts to suit multiple generic product bounties. Hackers without coding abilities are not given much direction on how to meaningfully contribute. And while these hackathon projects do occasionally produce unique market value with potential to continue development, they are often left abandoned without sufficient support, guidance, leadership, or entrepreneurial skills.

Sometimes that’s not the goal of the hackathon, and it’s actually to teach or expose to new tools, in which case most outcomes are generally satisfying. But to hope for something like a “unicorn”, or even a high-quality demo or MVP from these events requires more in the learning stack, and ideas can be made more viable with additional skills involved.

Building a New Structure - An Evolving Idea

I’ve participated in a few “inclusive” hackathons, notably with FWB x Rally. The hackathon centered on Creator Tools, inviting creatives, design thinkers, artists, and musicians to bring their problem-solving skills and perspectives to the table. It produced this crypto-enabled livestreaming platform used by onchain native artists.

Since that experience, I’ve been openly advocating for refreshed thinking around hackathons, with hopeful expansions around the “new internet” entrepreneurial landscape for more diverse founders. Pointing to a Metalabel x FWB exercise between oceans404.eth and myself at FEST 2023, we wrote the first piece of our experiment as an entry for the Collaboration Cookbook workshop.

Based on our hackathon experiences (Steph alone has won 7+ hackathons), the idea of identifying archetypes first entered the chat, where everyone has distinct responsibilities and concrete deliverables for the overall project.

To structure meaningful contributions to the demo, we thought about it like this:

• 1 x Designer - they are in charge of the aesthetic, the way everything looks, as well as being able to provide wireframes for devs. They use design to influence user behavior, feel, and choice.

• 1 x Storyteller - these folks will pitch, and are in charge of writing the deck and copy in the product. They are as important as the designers in setting the vibe for the app, as well as providing context + guidance for the end users

• 2 x Developers - the more traditional crowd. Builders who can commit to collaboratively coding creative visions to life, build a website, etc. These members ground the project in reality, yet find workarounds and solutions.

Ultimately this is like cooking with my grandma: nothing is set in a strict recipe, and there are more variations yet explored. These agile, creative teams help each other through blocks while exploring more comprehensive solutions through dynamic problem-solving. Most critical is the idea of executable action: turning theories into real tests.

Creative Hackathons - An Infinite Garden

Holistic inclusion, which is to say context beyond your immediate understanding, gives better clarity around product-market-fit. Based on a desire for experimentation aligned with radically new capabilities, it’s possible to create frameworks for desired outcomes, using what’s been built, adjacent to innovation.

We can learn to cut and paste from new sources. Events like Adobe’s Creative Jam are a great example of learning a product by using it, and inviting designers and creatives to participate. This event primarily targets college students in North America, and has included household names across disciplines.

Additional components could be added based on focus. Music Hack Day was started in 2009 (sponsored by 10 API providers like Last.fm and SoundCloud) to build music apps. A business component could be added for an event centered around a minimum viable product, as is the case for this Ventureathon, where they give “as much importance to the business model as to the code submitted for the project”. Interactive bounties, laser-focused bounties, or crypto-native concepts like vested rewards systems can help expand the format to suit long and short term goals. I wrote a(n unused) hack proposal where rewards were distributed via Coordinape circles, a mechanism the participating community was already familiar with.

Final Thoughts

Details like a musician collaborating on a music production app, or involving a specialized UX designer (like for VR) are critical points of intention to help address both technocratic chasms and “unaware bubbles" from the very product conception. With versatile participants, teams have a chance to expand real-time learnings & integrate them into a live project.

One of my favorite questions to ask as a judge to hackers at Eth India 2023 was, “Did you have fun?” Everyone I asked smiled or chuckled nervously as they answered a resounding “Yes!” I never want to diminish the fun aspect of hackathons, as I think it’s a critical part of the playful spirit of hacking. Equally important for me is the original ethos of open knowledge sharing. Applied, collaborative learning is the future of education.

With that, a positive outcome could look like more creative problem solving around tech, opportunities to pursue broader access to entrepreneurial toolsets, or healthier user adoption behavior informed by diverse findings.

Ultimately, I would be satisfied with any fun collaborations that stretched us into exciting, unfamiliar territory.