8 Mistakes That Are Deterring Talented Developers From Your Hackathon

Sabreen Swan

Content Strategist/Writer at Eventornado

We hear hackathon organizers complain time and time again that they just can’t seem to attract enough developers to their hackathon. 

After weeks of planning, promoting, and hosting your event, seeing an unimpressive number of signups can be disheartening, so today we’re going to explore why your hackathon isn’t attracting the developers that you very much need!

We’ve rounded up 8 mistakes you might be making that are deterring talented developers from attending your hackathon.

Table of contents

1. You charge confusing fees
2. You’re not encouraging community engagement
3. Your marketing strategy is poor
4. You’re offering a mediocre prize 
5. You only offer first-place prizes
6. You don’t have a reputation 
7. There are no inspiring details
8. You have a bad reputation for long demos

Let's start with the fees:

1. You charge confusing fees

Organizers: don’t charge participants a joining fee!

If your hackathon is an in-person event and lasts a weekend, you’ll run up some costs for venue hire, food, and even lodging if you choose to offer it. 

Some hackathon organisers even choose to throw their event in a swanky hotel, with delicious food and bottomless beverages.

If that sounds like you, we suggest bringing on a sponsor to help with the overhead costs, because shifting the bill onto your participants isn’t going to put your hackathon on the developers’ must-attend list.

2. You’re not encouraging community engagement

One of the main reasons why developers join hackathons is to work on projects they normally wouldn’t work with people they wouldn’t normally work with. 

That means they want to socialize, network and maybe even make a friend or two at your hackathon! 

That’s why it’s so important to make your hackathon as community-based as possible, especially if it’s a virtual event.

You can foster a great community environment by hosting your hackathon on a platform that doesn’t just offer collaboration as a standalone tool, but one that makes it easy and natural.

For organizers who run their hackathons on Eventornado, community engagement is the most crucial aspect of their planning process and it starts instantly. 

As soon as participants are registered, they’re automatically directed straight to the community space where they can meet all the other participants, speak to the organizers, and even get help from the mentors.

Why we recommend using a dedicated chat for the event:

One mistake lots of hackathon organizers make is directing their participants to several platforms for the event.

That makes the participant follow a messy process - they register in one place, then have to make a new account on a chat platform, join multiple channels, and keep track of all the conversations happening inside. 

There are several reasons why this doesn’t work, but most of all, it’s a messy process that doesn’t foster or encourage collaboration.

In Eventornado, all registered participants are automatically forwarded to the event chat and added to the appropriate channels. 

3. Your marketing strategy is poor

It won’t matter how amazing your prize is or how special your guests are because if you don’t promote your hackathon properly, nobody will know it exists!

If you don’t get the word out, you risk wasting your efforts and losing out on talented developers who could have enriched your hackathon and been part of your community.

There are lots of ways to market your hackathon, but we know it can be difficult to know where to start.

We’ve put together a guide filled with the best ways to get your hackathon out there and in front of the right people: 7 Fool-Proof Ways To Promote Your Hackathon
 

4. You’re offering a mediocre prize 

The quickest way to repel quality applicants to your hackathon is to offer an unimpressive prize. 

While the best prize is usually cash (remember that you’ll likely have lots of entrepreneurs and startup organizers), there are plenty of hackathons that award non-cash prizes that offer value to participants, and so can you. 

Do developers need more tablets?

Laptops, tablets/iPads, phones, etc. are common prizes but it’s worth remembering that your developers most likely already own all of those things, and that decreases the value of your prize. 

5. You only offer first-place prizes

Many people have a difficult time imagining themselves as winners, and a hackathon that only offers first-place prizes can easily facilitate that doubt.

By offering several prizes, you can drastically increase the number of registrations and submissions, as more people feel that they could be in for a chance to win. 

Common practices include offering a first-place prize and two runner-ups, or a first-place prize, second, third, fourth, and fifth runners-ups. 

6. You don’t have a reputation 

How can you impress and attract developers if you’re a small business, an unknown startup, or a new name in the industry? 

Easy! Get partners and sponsors on board whose names developers will recognize and make use of their marketing, logos, and social media channels.

It’s a fool-proof and simple way to instantly enhance the prestige of your hackathon and attract talented developers.

7. There are no inspiring details

Even if you manage to gather the brightest and most ambitious participants for your hackathon, your event can quickly lose its steam if there’s nothing to inspire them.

Here are a few things you can do to create an inspiring environment for your hackathon:

• Choose a theme for your hackathon
• Have interesting judges
• Bring on a sponsor that participants know and respect
• Create a fun environment to keep participants energized
   

8. You have a bad reputation for long demos

This tip is specifically for all the hackathon veterans.

If you already have a few hackathons under your belt, it might be worth taking a minute to review your feedback.

Even if you’ve never actually asked participants for feedback, you can easily gauge the general feeling by checking social media for any mentions or hashtags of your event. 

It’s also a great way to pick up on any specific comments or criticism that you might not have thought of. 

Developers attend hackathons eager to get started and create something amazing.

One thing that can quickly kill that momentum?

Long and boring presentations and API demos. 

While participants will be excited to see their peers’ final ideas and prototypes, they’ll also likely be extremely tired, which is why it’s important to put a time limit on your demos. 

The last thing you want is for your participants to define your amazing hackathon by those final presentations and demos that dragged on for way too long.
 

Launch your first hackathon with Eventornado

Organizing a hackathon can be highly rewarding, whether you’re a new startup on the scene or if you’ve already made a name for yourself in the industry. 

So if you’re ready to launch yours, book yourself in for a free demo of Eventornado to see how easy the planning process can be! 

We help all our hackathon organizers get as prepared as possible for their event so that rather than wasting time on all the repetitive tasks and planning process, they can focus on building an engaging community and hosting an amazing hackathon.

Want to read more articles? Check out our library of blog posts and guides where you’ll find lots of useful insights and tips for first-time hackathon organizers.