Hello again. This is a continuation of the article about organizing a student hackathon.
This time I’ll tell you about the problems that appeared right during the hackathon and how we solved them, the local events that we added to the standard “code a lot and eat pizza” and some tips about which applications to use for the simplest organization of events of this magnitude.
After all financial preparations are completed, the most interesting stage begins: site preparation. Here you can find the largest number of problems and steams that you don’t even think about. Let's start by ordering different snacks and equipment. Two main problems immediately follow from this: who will receive them and where to put it all? Let me remind you once again that all the organizers are students, and the hackathon itself took place on January 26-27, which is exactly in the middle of the trimester. For each order, we needed 4-5 people (given the scale of the event, we could easily get 20-30 boxes of drinks at a time) and the only option for us was to look for volunteers among other courses. Of course, you can use Facebook groups to find them, but Slack is our people's candidate. For each delivery, you can create a separate channel, integrate them into Trello (an application for creating lists of actions), and then add those who agreed to help and record everything that was received in Trello. So, everything is received, even suppose that the delivery was to the correct building of the university (a couple of times they brought to other buildings and okay Imperial almost completely in South Kensington, they could have delivered to the University of London by mistake) and that we have enough people and several carts for the transportation of especially heavy loads, what's next? Where to put all this cargo? Every major university community has its own small warehouse for such events. Unfortunately, everything will not fit in a 2x3 room. Here university sponsors came to our aid. Several tons (!) of drinks and snacks were delivered to our student union partner. A small digression. Each faculty has its own union: engineering, medical, scientific and geological. Our engineering room has about 2 free rooms (only shhh, I don't know how much it follows university rules at all) have been fully (!) converted into warehouses for one event. Next will be a time-lapse of how we got these things from there. My back didn't thank me at all.
It is very difficult to find where to keep all these things, even more difficult to distribute them correctly. For reference: there are 3 zones in total. Lower and 2 upper hackathons. The sizes are approximately equal and in general there are no problems with the distribution. Until there are people with special dietary preferences. Vegans, vegetarians and many more. We always send out a questionnaire in advance to know how much to order. Naturally, emails are forgotten and lost. Therefore, we always add 20% to the main order in the form of spare special options, such as margaritas with gluten-free dough. Expensive? Undoubtedly. But the last thing we need is militant vegans who have not had enough food without animal products. Modern problems require modern solutions.
Let's assume that everything fits miraculously. Magic, nothing else. Even that everything was smashed into place overnight. What's next? Remember I said about "swag"? Yeah, and by the way, every sponsor has it. And everyone is designed for at least 200 people, and for large sponsors, it’s generally for 300 people. It also needs to be stored, but that’s not even the main thing. I also said that we have our own “swag”. And here it is for 500 people. And the problem is its fragmentation. Many things came the evening before the hackathon, and there was no chance to be ready for this. Moreover, all these things should be neatly packed in bags. 500 pieces. 500, Carl. So I had to organize an impromptu conveyor: there were vouchers for alcoholic drinks at the bar, T-shirts, pasta and brush sets, mugs, stickers, and I don’t even remember how many more. And despite the fact that we ordered this beauty from different suppliers and they all came at different times. I had to work hard to earn extra money at the factory as a bonus to the organization of the event itself. Spoiler: we finished the preparation at 4 am and started at 8:30. I only stayed until midnight to be on duty for the rest of the night. This is followed by a rather boring part about the arrangement of tables, the arrangement of extensions and other obligatory rubbish.
The X hour has come. Sponsors arrive early, settle in, tactically lay out swag to attract more students. Memorable: One company said at the opening that there are two kinds of employers. Those who pay well respect their employees and let them develop creatively. Like for example (company name). And about the latter, all other sponsors can tell by their own example. This phrase became a candidate for the prize for the best meme (about his presentation at the very end of the last article). Students arrive as early as possible to snatch more things for free. Here are a few words about how we let them in. Tickets are purchased at Eventbride, and all organizers have a scan app. Problems start when participants don't read the conditions: minimum age is 18 for example, or bring your passport with you, or even tickets cannot be transferred after the deadline (three days before the hackathon). Many, unfortunately, have to refuse. But from what I remember: two who forgot their passports from London, so they just went home and took them with them. Those to whom we handed over the tickets, we were allowed to go after everyone else, scanned the tickets so that later their owner would not try to slip through with a bonus.
Now a little about the problems with the tickets themselves: there are only about 400 of them. Plus a few for graduates as a parting gift. Initially, we kept them on the university website, but it steadily fell 10 minutes before the start of sales up to 30 minutes after the start, and they were completely randomly distributed among the participants. I'm already silent about the race conditions due to which we sold an average of 20-30 more than we should. The solution was Eventbride. It copes well with the load, tickets fly away on average in 1-3 seconds per batch, they are issued exactly on schedule. But here another problem arises: the honesty of the participants. You can download and set up the bot at the very first Google link, and ideally we try to intimidate such smart people that we will cancel their tickets. In reality, it is almost impossible to prove that you did not use / used a bot. Tickets, in turn, are divided into Imperial / all the rest and (small discrimination) for our students there are a few more. For the department to help, such rules.
Further more specific problems of preparation. One of the events that we hold closer to midnight is an open bar. Naturally, in hackathon culture, sleep deprivation is not always a good idea. Therefore, few people visit. But those who come are always happy, drinks are free (up to 5 GBP included), a fairly large supply of vouchers, plus it's a great way to relax after a day of non-stop hackathon. The disadvantages are more likely for the organizers: many under the guise, while the organizers are tired of watching everything, manage to get drunk quite well. Deal with them of course us. But never to directly strong problems did not reach. It is important to note that, like the hackathon, the evening bar has a sponsor. And this year they came off to the fullest, buying all those present "bomb huntsman". It was very difficult to explain (which I'm all for, pour more) that the half-dead members on campus are a little bit different from who they want to hire into their company and stop this chaos at about 30th cocktail. After that was the legendary Nandos chicken delivery.
It's legendary because local restaurant owners came along with delivery men to see who decided to spend a few thousand on chicken on Saturday night. In total, it took us 2 hours and 30 volunteers to unload everything and distribute it between the zones. Photos are attached. Don't forget to yell "vegans here" or they'll eat vegan food instead of vegan and curse you afterwards. Another memorable event was karaoke. Everyone was already there, including us. Just imagine: 200 people occupied the lecture hall at 2 am, singing completely random songs (I sang Let It Go, my sister would be proud). It was great, but again typical problems: to bring equipment, set up, negotiate with security and the library (Saturday night is a very popular time to visit) so that we would not be kicked out. The guards were offered to sing, they refused.
All this, of course, is fun. But. The hackathon lasts two days: participants can come and go. No organizers. In total, I slept 3.5 hours the two nights and 5 hours the night before. And that's because other volunteers forced me (and going to the bar made itself felt). You could sleep either in a separate room with yoga mats, or wherever you could. I slept on a chair, it is not forbidden by law, I sleep where I want. The main thing is that there should be 3 people awake for each hakzon. Another task was to periodically check the projector, since it could overheat and we definitely did not have extra money for repairs. To put it up, we needed 6 people and 2 carts. In general, cases were for the tonsils almost all the time. At some point, we began to distribute popcorn and cotton candy, again, we cooked. The fire safety rating dropped a lot when I took out popcorn right during the warm-up “because now they will swoop in and I won’t be left.”
This part went over many problems in the organization and their solutions. Still engineers. But a huge number of things remained behind the scenes: what were the problems during the hackathon itself, the selection of prizes and awards, how “smart” voting worked, feedback from sponsors, and how we dealt with cleaning the premises a week after the event. And also a small flex: this is the first student hackathon to receive coverage on the BBC. I will also write about this in the next episode of this hackathon saga. I'll start writing soon, but for now, here's my email: [email protected] and project website:
Source: habr.com