You can't just perfectly get it all done: what happened behind the scenes of the Guinness record

Want to know what the organizers of the 'Digital Breakthrough' think about how the competition went? This post won’t cover the scale, the record book, prominent figures, unique solutions, or impeccable organization. We will share our main screw-ups—believe us, there were quite a few. But making mistakes is normal, especially when you learn from them.

Let's start from the beginning

Application Campaign

Instead of a thousand applications, a thousand questions

To be honest—we initially faced the problem that our audience did not quite understand how hackathons work—there were many newcomers among the participants who were unfamiliar with this format. They were interested in the mechanics of such events, project evaluation systems, the criteria for selecting the expert council, and much more. Thus, in the first weeks of the application campaign, we gathered not registrations but a ton of questions on various topics—often they didn’t even relate to the competition itself.

We learned that before launching the application collection, it is essential to communicate extensively with potential participants—immersing them in the specifics of the event and answering questions about all upcoming stages.

In general, we need to engage more actively with the tech community, which is more interested in the news about the progress of the competition rather than the latest achievements of partner companies—why did we choose the hackathon format? How is it adapted for our competition? How will online testing be conducted? Wow, online testing has started—what should we do next? Wait, I don't understand—I've completed the testing, but there are no results. When will they be? What tasks will there be at the regional stages? Who is responsible for setting them? And who will be in the expert council? How were they selected?

And so on.

The main lesson: it’s not enough to just say: 'Hello, we are a competition for managers, IT specialists, and designers. Participate quickly. By the way, it will be in a hackathon format.' You need to explain everything in detail and step by step.

Online Testing

Errors in tests or different interpretations of tasks by different people?

During the online testing phase, our social media was flooded with complaints about errors in the tasks. The issue was that the same texts of the tasks were perceived differently by specialists from various fields. It all depended on how they entered the profession—whether they were self-taught or had extensive academic knowledge and corresponding education. Their perception of semantics and linguistics differs significantly, which needed to be taken into account when compiling the tests.

The main lesson: Next time, we plan to gather regional focus groups consisting of specialists from different profiles. They will help formulate tasks tailored to specific regions.

Regional stages

Summer is for resting

The very first mistake was that we chose summer to conduct the regional stages—a season of vacations and student holidays—therefore, very few people participated in the hackathon in some cities.

For this reason, we had to reduce the number of nominations, leading teams to abandon the tasks they originally wanted to tackle. Nevertheless, the cities with fewer participants managed to handle all the tasks successfully, demonstrating it is possible to create good solutions even with a small team. This was the case, for instance, in Yakutsk and Veliky Novgorod—there, all teams that initially participated in the hackathon reached the finals.

The main lesson: or maybe not in summer?

Characteristics of each region

The conditions under which the regional hackathons took place depended directly on the local partner supporting the competition. Thus, some locations were better while others were worse. Not all of them understood the specifics of such events and why people work 24/7, sleep on bean bags or in tents, and eat pastries from the cafeteria. Therefore, there were some inconsistencies in certain aspects.

We express our deep gratitude to the universities—they assisted us with the venue, experts, inviting media, and gathering participant funnels. Working with them helped us better understand the specifics of the regions—in the future, this will make our cooperation more effective.

The main lesson: In the next season, it is essential to build our work in the regions more thoroughly and rely more on ourselves and our experience rather than local partners.

Information is perceived differently in the regions.

The channels for attracting participants in million-plus cities and regions operate quite differently. For instance, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, it is often sufficient to launch ads on social media and promote them in groups where the target audience is present. In regions, word-of-mouth and calls to participate from local influencers (regional administrations, bloggers, universities, IT communities) are far more effective.

The main lesson: increase the number of channels through which we will engage with the audience. Attract more opinion leaders and local bloggers.

Confused by vague task formulations.

What can upset and even infuriate hackathon participants the most? Obviously, dull and poorly thought-out tasks. At both the regional and final stages, teams complained that task formulations often sounded unclear and opaque.

Throughout the competition, we always tried to adhere to the rule — set quality tasks => receive quality solutions. However, we must admit that this was not always the case. Given the large number of tasks, each with its own datasets... failures did occur. But everything was compensated by the support from experts, who never left the teams, answered all questions, and worked through the projects from all angles. This significantly influenced the quality of the prototypes produced as a result.

The main lesson: For task formulation, we will enlist the help of specialists who have a deep understanding of the technologies that participants will be working with. For example, if we set a task to develop an AR application for interiors, we will need an expert who has already applied augmented reality for similar solutions.

Final

"Hello! The hackathon is coming up, but we haven't received our tickets," or issues with logistics.

Some participants received late information about how their journey to the finals would be organized. This triggered a flurry of questions, and we, as the organizers, came under real fire. We won't shift the blame onto anyone — the project team is certainly responsible for all delays. Most of the time, these delays were related to our requests for assistance from the regions, but each of them was able to organize logistics on different timelines. In the future, we will allocate more time for this.

The main lesson: It is crucial to continuously inform participants about the status of ticket purchases, hotel reservations, and other operational matters. This will help them feel more at ease and simply wait for the coveted documents to arrive in their inbox.

And, of course, Guinness

Initially, we had no goal to get into the Guinness Book of Records. But during the regional stages, we gradually understood that we had every chance, and closer to the finals, we decided — 'We will do this, colleagues!'. Everything was going perfectly until the representatives of the Guinness World Records announced the requirement that hackathon participants must stay in the venue for an entire working day (12 hours) without leaving. They could only leave the venue for 40 minutes. This affected the standard catering arrangements and access control, which caused discontent among the participants.

The main lesson: Now we will immediately inquire about all the pitfalls that may arise from various activities within the competition and inform the participants about them in advance.

Share in the comments what other mistakes were noticed in the organization of the competition? We are always ready to work on improving our results!

Source: habr.com