Do you want to know the opinion of the organizers of the "Digital Breakthrough" about how the competition went? In this post there will be nothing about the scale, the book of records, the first persons, unique solutions and impeccable organization. We will talk about our main fakap - believe us, there were quite a few of them. But it’s okay to make mistakes, especially if you learn from those mistakes.
Start over
Application campaign
Instead of a thousand applications, a thousand questions
To be honest, at the very beginning we faced the problem that our audience did not quite understand how hackathons work in general - there were many newcomers among the participants who were not familiar with this format. They were interested in the mechanics of holding such events, project evaluation systems, criteria for selecting an expert council, and much more. Thus, in the first weeks of the application campaign, we did not collect registrations, but a bunch of questions on various topics - often they did not even concern the contest itself.
From this we learned the lesson that before the launch of the collection of applications, it is necessary to communicate a lot with potential participants - immerse yourself in the specifics of the event and answer questions about all the upcoming stages.
In general, to work more actively with the technology community, which is more interested not in the latest achievements of partner companies, but in news about the course of the competition - why did you choose the hackathon format? How does he adapt to our competition? How will the online testing work? Wow, online testing has begun - what to do next? So, I don’t understand - I passed the test, but there are no results. When will they? And what will be the tasks at the regional stages? Who bets? And who will sit on the expert council? How were they selected?
And so on.
Main lesson: It's not enough to just say, “Hi, we're a competition for managers, IT professionals, and designers. Get involved soon. And by the way, it will be in the hackathon format.” It is necessary to explain everything in detail and step by step.
Online testing
Errors in tests or misunderstanding of the task by different people?
At the stage of online testing, our social networks were bursting with dissatisfied messages about errors in assignments. The problem was that the same texts of assignments were perceived differently by specialists from different fields. It all depended on how they entered the profession - whether they studied independently or had broad academic knowledge and relevant education. Their perception of semantics and linguistics is very different - this had to be taken into account when compiling tests.
Main lesson: next time we plan to convene regional focus groups consisting of specialists from different fields. They will help to formulate tasks for specific regions.
Regional stages
Need to rest in the summer
The very first mistake was that we chose summer for the regional stages - the season of holidays and student vacations, so in some cities very few people took part in the hackathon.
For this reason, we reduced the number of nominations, because of which the teams had to abandon the tasks that they originally wanted to solve. Nevertheless, those cities where there were not so many participants worked out all the tasks with a bang and showed that it is possible to make good decisions even with a small team. This was the case, for example, in Yakutsk and Veliky Novgorod, where all the teams that originally came to the hackathon qualified for the finals.
Main lesson: maybe not in the summer?
Features of each region
The conditions under which the regional hackathons were held directly depended on the local partner who supported the competition. Therefore, somewhere it was better, and somewhere it was worse. Not all of them understood the specifics of such events and why people work 24/7, sleep on ottomans or in tents and eat buns from the canteen. Therefore, there were some shortcomings in some moments.
We are very grateful to the universities - they helped us with the platform, experts, inviting the media, collecting a funnel of participants. Working with them helped us better understand the specifics of the regions, which will make our cooperation more effective in the future.
Main lesson: next season, it is necessary to build work in the regions in more detail and rely more on ourselves and our experience, and not on local partners.
Regions perceive information differently
Channels for attracting participants in million-plus cities and regions work in completely different ways. If, for example, in Moscow and St. Petersburg it will be enough to launch advertising on social networks and do “sowing” in groups where the target audience sits, then word of mouth and calls for participation from local “influencers” (regional administrations) work more effectively in the regions. , bloggers, universities, IT communities).
Main lesson: increase the number of channels through which we will work with the audience. Attract more opinion leaders, local bloggers.
Confused by vague wording of tasks
What can most upset and even anger hackathon participants? Of course, boring and unfinished tasks. At the regional and final stages, the teams complained that the wording of the tasks often sounded not entirely clear and transparent.
Throughout the competition, we have always tried to follow the rule - set a quality problem => get a quality solution. But let's face it, this hasn't always been the case. In conditions when there were a lot of tasks and for each of them their own data sets were issued ... failures happened. But everything was compensated by the help of experts who did not leave the teams a single step, answered all questions and worked through projects from all sides. This is what influenced the quality of the prototypes that came out according to the results.
Main lesson: for the formation of tasks, we will take the help of specialists who are deeply versed in the technologies with which the participants will have to work. So, if we set the task of developing an AR application for the interior, then we will need an expert who has already used augmented reality for such solutions more than once.
The final
"Hello! The hackathon is coming soon, but the tickets were not sent to us, ”or problems with logistics
Some participants were late sent information about how their road to the final will be organized. This caused a flurry of questions, and we, as organizers, came under real fire. We will not switch arrows to anyone - the project team, of course, is responsible for all delays. Most often they were due to the fact that in most cases we asked for help from the regions, but each of them was able to organize logistics at different times. We will allocate more time for this in the future.
Main lesson: it is necessary to constantly inform the participants about the stage of the purchase of tickets, hotel reservations and other operating systems. This will help them to be calmer and just wait for the cherished documents to fall into the mail.
And, of course, Guinness
Initially, we did not have the task of getting into the Guinness Book of Records. But during the regional stages, we gradually realized that we had every chance for this, and closer to the finals we decided - “We will do it, colleagues!”. Everything was going great until the representatives of the Guinness Book of Records announced the requirements that the hackathon participants should not leave the premises for the whole working day (12 hours). They had the opportunity to leave the site only for 40 minutes. This affected the standard mode of catering and access control, which aroused the indignation of the participants.
Main lesson: now we will immediately ask about all the pitfalls that may arise from various activities within the framework of the competition, and inform the participants about them in advance.
Share in the comments what other mistakes were noticed in the organization of the contest? We are always ready to work on improving the results!
Source: habr.com