Don’t Forget

Here is a list of things that are easy to forget when booking a venue. It’s best to bring these up before you sign contracts so that you can get pricing included. Contract addendums can be a pain.

• HVAC – Some buildings turn off air conditioning or heat on the weekends. Make sure to check on this. It’s possible that having HVAC on over the weekend will result in an extra cost. Trust me, it’s worth it when you run an overnight hackathon on the hottest weekend in Los Angeles!
• Janitorial – As long as it’s in my event budget, I always make sure I have janitorial support. If you are catering three (or more) meals for over 100 people, you need some help cleaning up.
• Power – Always ask about accessibility to power for your attendees. I have a small Pelican case of extension cords and power strips that I take to hackathons. It’s helpful to know if you will need some power help earlier rather than later.
• Wi-Fi – ALWAYS ask about Wi-Fi! You want to make sure the venue has enough backhaul to support the hackathon. It’s safe to assume you will need access points that can cover twice your target attendance. Your attendees will connect a laptop and probably a phone to Wi-Fi. If you are running an IoT event, you will want to ask to have a completely open network for the hackathon so that devices can connect easily.

Negotiating

Once a quote comes back from a venue, feel free to negotiate with the venue to work to fit into budget. Some venues are flexible with costs and others aren’t. It can never hurt to ask.

One negotiation option is to look at a multi-event discount. This is great if you are going to be running more than one event in a city and would like to have a venue secured for all of them. The upfront cost will be more, however your per event cost will be lower.

If you have any tips for what to remember when talking to a venue, leave it in the comments!

Be sure to check out the rest of the Hackathon Edventures series.

Find a Venue

One of the first things you need to run a successful hackathon is a venue. This post covers the process I go through when I’m looking for a venue. I am generally searching for a venue online and I don’t have the option to look at spaces in person. However, if you are planning a local hackathon, I highly recommend doing a venue walk through before signing a contract with a venue. This is especially important if you’ve never run an event there previously.

Searching Online for a Venue

I run hackathons all over the country. Usually, I am not local to the city the hackathon is in, so I can’t go to a venue for a walk through. I rely on photos, floor plans and any other details a venue can give me to make decisions.

Search Terms

The first kind of venues I look at are coworking spaces. Coworking spaces generally have a large common area (good for kickoff and final presentations), plenty of tables and desks and great wifi. Using the search terms below, you should be able to compile a good list of possible venues to research.

• Coworking space + CITY
• Startup Incubator + CITY
• Hackathon + CITY (This is helpful to find venues that have previously hosted hackathons.)

Venue Websites

In addition to seeking out possible venues, there are some websites that make searching and filtering venues super easy. I use Peerspace the most.

• Peerspace – this site has great search features. You can filter based on type of event (I usually choose Retreat or Workshop), location, number of attendees and price. In addition there are photos of the venues and you can reach out to the venue manager through Peerspace.
• EventUp – this site has more search filters that you can use. However, I haven’t had as much luck with EventUp as I have with Peerspace. It really depends on what kind of venue and price point you are looking for.
• Spacebase – this site has international options and it could work well for smaller events (>100 attendees). The site is focused on an hourly rental business model; I recommend contacting the space provider for a custom price quote.

I reach out to 3 – 5 venues to get a price quote for the space. Some venues will provide a request form for you fill out and others will have an events or community management contact. If you are sending an email or a message through a contact form, include as much detail as possible. If you are able to include enough detail in the quote request, a venue might be able to provide a quote right away, cutting out a lot of back and forth. Here are some details you should include, if you know them:

• Your name and contact details
• What kind of event you are running (company hackathon, themed hackathon, hackathon for charity, etc.) and the intended audience
• Date and times when the venue is needed (will the hackathon be overnight or will the venue close and reopen the next day? Be sure to include setup and cleanup time.)
• Target attendance (50, 100, 200 attendees?)
• What kind of seating setup you would like (I typically request theater style for the kickoff and tables and chairs for the rest of the event)
• A/V needs like projector, screen, microphone
• Will you be providing catering? Do you need assistance with catering?

I hope these tips are able to assist you in your venue search. If you have any great resources for finding awesome venues, leave it in the comments!

Be sure to check out the rest of the Hackathon Edventures series.

You have two thematic slots to fill. The first is a topic theme and the second is a technology theme. You do not have to set a theme for both theme and technology. I frequently set one, but not the other. Examples of a topic theme are education, music, travel, smart city. Examples of a technology theme are IoT, mobile app, VR. The topic theme can be another industry entirely and the technology theme should be how you want people to build or deliver their solutions. If you have an IoT education hackathon, you are asking teams to build apps for education that are connected to the Internet of Things.

When you are deciding on a theme, there is a balance of keeping it broad, but not too broad while simultaneously making it specific, but not so specific that it only allows for three project variations. For example, a theme that would be too broad would be Government. The idea of government is so widespread and topically diverse that it doesn’t provide enough parameters to drive creative solutions. A theme that would be too narrow would be a Smart City Parking theme. That is too specific and will likely yield very similar solutions from most teams. It will be boring to sit through 15 parking apps during the final presentations.

A good theme is Smart City since it provides parameters, but still has a number of diverse problems that developers can solve. When I’ve run a smart city hackathon, I will also specify sub-themes. I list three areas that team can focus on like public safety, smart transportation or environment. Doing that helps to provide even more parameters if it would be helpful to the team. If not, they are still able to work under the Smart City thematic umbrella.

To incentivize teams to build projects within the theme hackathon, I attach prizes to the themes. (Another way to encourage thematic participation is to include adherence to the theme in the judging criteria.) In the Smart City hackathon example, I would have a prize for each of the three sub-categories and I would have a larger prize for the Best Smart City Hack. This encourages teams to develop projects in the three sub-categories but allows for a team to build something different and still be considered for a prize. Some people don’t like prizes at hackathons and that is just fine. I run my hackathons with prizes, but I also stress to participants the other great benefits of hackathons.

If you are working with a subject matter expert (SME) in a theme area, feel free to ask them to come up with several problems they would like to see team work on. You or the SME can present the problems during the kickoff. The is a helpful way to give teams a starting point. Often teams will work on different parts of the problem statements. They will bring in their own perspective which will give more variety to the final presentations.

Shawn Ang

When you think about hackathon goals, you should think about what you and your sponsors want to accomplish with the hackathon. You may not know exactly what a sponsor hope to accomplish with a hackathon, but the exercise of brainstorming what would matter to a sponsor will help you later on.

I run hackathons as part of an established developer evangelism program. We have overall program goals that help to decide what our hackathon goals are. Some of our hackathon goals are as follows:

Event Specific

• Brand awareness (hackathons are part of the overall marketing strategy)
• Attendance (a great quantifiable goal)
• Event satisfaction

General Goals

• Foster innovation
• Build technology communities
• Provide education within technology community (hackathons are a great place to learn very quickly!)
• Promote a particular technology
• Gather feedback from developers about a technology (beta product, API, hardware, software service, etc.)

I focus my hackathons on providing a time and space for participants to create and build cool technology. I understand that a hackathon is a very short period of time. A shiny and polished app is not going to come out of these hackathons. A longer hackathon may have different results, but the hackathons I run are 24 – 36 hours long. Many projects are, figuratively, held together with toothpicks and bubblegum.

Frequently, there are very creative ideas that come out of hackathons, but they aren’t production ready yet. They will need a lot more work before they get listed in an app store or go live. If you are looking to build a startup, get a polished app, or finalize a business plan as a deliverable, a hackathon may not be the best way to achieve those goals. There are other events and programs you can use to achieve those objectives.

After you’ve defined your hackathon goals, you will need to define how to measure them to define success. Goals such as “Brand awareness” are pretty fluffy and difficult to measure. However, a goal such as hashtag usage or social handle mentions can contribute to brand awareness and are easier to measure. Goals such as event satisfaction or feedback can be done easily with an event survey.

If you’ve listed your goals and a hackathon is a great to meet those goals, awesome! Stay tuned for more info that will help make your event a success.

Kelly Sikkema

I have been working with developers and developer communities for over 8 years. I’ve worked with online and in-person communities as a community leader and manager, program manager and participant. I love to build and support passionate communities. In my current job, I produce in-person, community-building events all over the US.

I work for a large company that has a strong developer evangelism program. I produce anywhere from 10 – 15 events per year. I realize that most people are not running that many events per year. You might be looking for some tips for an annual or semi-annual hackathon, trying to start a hackathon program at your company or start a hackathon tour/road show. Either way, I hope you are able to gain something useful from this blog series.

Some recommendations I make are geared towards someone who runs multiple events per year (or is involved in multiple events as a sponsor or staff member) such as using Pelican cases to ship things. If you are running a local hackathon once a year, you probably don’t need a Pelican case. However, they are super cool and crazy useful!

I want to share some biases and advantages that I have which seep into my advice and viewpoints. For example, I view some things through a corporate filter. However, I’ve tried to include other ways of doing things at hackathons that I have seen be successful and that extend past my goals of brand visibility, attendance and NPS.

I work for a large company which provides a number of advantages for hackathon planning.

1. I have an event budget that I work with for every hackathon. My event budget isn’t enough to fully cover the cost of an event, so I rely on sponsorships to make up the difference.
2. Our team also has a hardware budget. Having events that are accessible and provide learning opportunities for participants is important and having loaner hardware available helps to meet those goals.
3. I am part of a broader team that can assist with very specific parts of hackathon planning and execution.
4. Our program has built strong developer communities in several markets. Because of that, our email promotion can be very effective.
5. I get to use a corporate shipping rate. This makes shipping large Pelican cases all over the country vastly more affordable!
6. Finally, there is travel budget for the event owner. We are able to travel to each hackathon location for the final event execution.

I love to run well-planned, smooth, enjoyable events. I want attendees, sponsors and staff to have the best experience possible at one of my hackathons.

No matter how many events I’ve planned, every event is a different. Every event will have hiccups or something that goes wrong at the last minute. I firmly believe that failing to plan is planning to fail. Even if you don’t follow the plan exactly, having a plan gives you a framework to make adjustments should the need arise.

I wanted to share my developer event knowledge and I thought this would be the best way to do it. I am often asked for event advice. I wanted a place that could serve as a reference for this information. I know that this is a lot of information and not all of it will be relevant to your role at a hackathon. That’s fine! Skip over what doesn’t interest you.

I hope you are able to find something useful out of this series. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.

National Novel Writing Month believes in the transformational power of creativity. We provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people find their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page.

The flagship initiative is in November which challenges participants to write a 50,000-word novel. If you write 1,667 words everyday in November, you will have 50,000 words at the end of 30 days.

Cliff Johnson

I am not a novelist nor do I have any desire to be. However, I do have a few topics and thoughts that I’ve wanted to write about. This year I was a NaNo Rebel and although I wrote 50,000 words, I didn’t write a novel. I wrote a blog post series that I’ve always wanted to put together. I also included some good journaling prompts in my 50,000 words.

During NaNoWriMo, I wrote words every day in November. Some days I didn’t write 1,667 words and other days I far exceeded it. I can’t say that I particularly enjoyed writing 50,000 words, but I did end November with two valuable takeaways around consistency and sustainability.

Consistency

National Novel Writing Month teaches consistency and works to make it a habit. If you put forth an effort, even a small effort, consistently, it can lead to big things. Like 50,000 words big.

Anyone can apply this lesson of consistency to other areas of their life. If you want to learn something/improve a skill/etc., you can put in the effort for 30 days. At the end of 30 days, you will have more days of experience with whatever you chose. For NaNoWriMo, the goal is to have more words at the end of November than you had at the beginning of November. The best way to become a better writer is to write. Just like the best way to become a better programmer is to program. And the best way to become a better painter is to paint. The best way to get better at something is to practice it.

This isn’t a hard concept to comprehend and there is lots of content floating around about 30-day challenges, like this TED Talk. However, it is a hard concept to put into to practice.

Sustainability

Writing 50,000 words in a month is a big challenge and for some people it’s a great tool to help them build a writing habit. For me, it’s just not sustainable. I was so grateful to reach 50,000 words! Mostly because I don’t want to be a novelist. In fact, it’s taken me over a month to write this post because I was so tired of writing in November.

Writing for hours per day was difficult and many other aspects of my life fell by the wayside. Andrew and I barely cooked, cleaned or did laundry during the month of November. With both of us writing, no one had time to adult. I love the idea of 30 day challenges and I will do more of them, but I’ll be looking for ones that only require a 20 – 60 minute commitment per day.

After having written something every single day in November, I will leave you with this:

Either you’ll make time or you’ll make an excuse.

Cristina Gottardi

I always struggle with coming back to things. How do I come back to this blog 5 years later? This blog was built on technologies that might not exist or be exciting anymore. As I’ve moved forward in my career, I’ve moved away from creating and building technology to talking about and enabling technology.

How do I come back to this space from which I’ve been absent for so long? It almost feels like I shouldn’t come back and I should continue to let it age and grow moss. Lucky for me, this is my space and my tiny bit of the internet that I pay for,so I get to be here. In whatever form I want.

Write what you know.

This has always intrigued me and irked me. Writing what I know is great because I know about things that interest me and I’m always willing to talk about those things. Sometimes the phrase irks me because if you only write what you know, how do you find out new things? I suppose you go find out about the new things and they you can write about them. I get pouty because it takes me too long to remember that.

How do I come back? What do I write about? What is interesting to me?

First of all, a life update. About a year ago, around when I made my last post, I made the decision to leave Microsoft. That decision was really difficult for me; I loved working for Microsoft and talking with students about the awesome apps they created. However, an awesome opportunity came up that would give me the chance to be Program Manager for one of Microsoft’s academic initiatives. Unfortunately, this opportunity was a contract position that meant I had to leave Microsoft in order to take this role.

So, a year ago I left Microsoft and now I contract for Microsoft as a vendor. I currently work on DreamSpark! For me, this is amazing! As a student, I used DreamSpark to get software, as an Academic Developer Evangelist I told students about DreamSpark and now I get to help keep DreamSpark running. I think it’s a pretty nifty full circle.

As a bonus, one of my life goals has always been to come back and live in the Seattle area. I have lots of family and good friend out here. Plus, it means that I get to spend more time with my boyfriend Andrew since we no longer have to commute from one side of the country to the other to see each other. This was a great move for me, career-wise and personally. Unfortunately, it meant that I was super busy moving and getting to know my new job with DreamSpark and I didn’t have a lot of time for blogging. But that’s about to change, yay!

Now for the part where I ruminate about what I want to do with this space. My site, creepyed.com has been a personal blog and a work blog. They both have had a technology slant and I really like that. I no longer need to keep a work blog since I’m not being measured on my online presence (which explains why it seemed like I dropped of the face of social media for a year). This space can return to being a personal blog. However, I still want this blog to have a technical slant because 1) I love technology and 2) I really want to keep using “tech-cellent.”

Going forward, I will be using creepyed.com to document some of my side projects. I’m hoping that blogging about what I’m doing will keep me accountable for finishing my projects. I’ve found that I have a lot of passionate energy, but I sometimes I struggle to focus it and not get distracted by the next thing that comes up. I plan to post my process and progress on my projects along with the finished product. This is really different from what I’ve posted here in the past, but I’m sorry I’m not sorry. I’m using these projects to figure out what my next step should look like. I’m sure there will be some tech here and there as well. I hope you stick with me!

Developer registration

• Opening a developer account: This topic explains the steps to open a Windows Store developer account. Once an account is open, developers can log into their Store Dashboard and start publishing apps.
• About strong authentication: This topic explains how Microsoft Accounts are kept secure by requiring security proofs that use multiple forms of identification.

Publishing apps

• Getting started checklists: What developers need to get started.
• Submitting your app describes the technical steps for how to submit an app.

Help with app certification

• Windows 8 app certification requirements: This guiding document includes more details and examples of what’s required to pass certification.
• Avoiding common certification failures: This topic lists common reasons why apps fail certification.
• Resolving certification failures: This article contains an entry for each certification requirement, and lists the current recommendations for resolving common failures.
• Index of UX guidelines

In-app purchases

• In-app purchase experience for a customer
• How to support in-app purchases
• Verifying purchases using receipts

Marketing materials

• Marketing your app In addition to articles on how to create a great app listing in the Windows Store,  you can get Windows Store logos, usage specifications, and other marketing assets.

Something that hasn’t been very well documented yet is how to implement the Google Maps API with Windows 8. There are lots of questions about how to do it, but not a lot of answers. Hopefully, this tutorial can help with that.

Before getting into the uber-exciting details, I need to thank Frank LaVigne (@tableteer) for his help. This tutorial would have never been possible without his genius. You can find Frank online at Frank’s World. I’m not a JavaScript expert and Frank was super patient while I asked him tons of questions.

NOTE: If you’re looking for a stupid-easy maps implementation, check out this blog post from G. Andrew Duthie about using Maps app that ships with Windows 8.

Out-of-the-box error

Right now, if you try to include the script for Google Maps API and add a map to the page, you’ll be met with the following error:

Even though you’ve included the source for the script, calling google.maps just doesn’t work. I’ve discovered there are a couple gotchas when implementing the Google Maps API. Keep reading to find out about the secret sauce for Google Maps on Windows 8.

Secret Sauce

Using an iFrame

The first ingredient for the secret sauce is to use an iFrame to display the Google Map. In the tutorial we’ll create a second html page that will have all the information for the Google Map implementation. We’ll create the iFrame in default.html in the tutorial.

Not using page control

The next ingredient in the secret sauce (that technically doesn’t go in) is the page control. For the map html page, we’ll need a map.html, map.js and map.css file. You can get all of these files bundled together by adding a page control. Do NOT do this. The page control also implements some navigation functionality that Google Maps doesn’t know what to do with. This can cause some errors having to do with width offsets that Google Maps doesn’t understand how to implement.

Ms-appx-web

The last, and possibly most important, ingredient for our secret sauce is the use of ms-appx-web in our iFrame src. Due to security restrictions of Windows 8, you can’t load external scripts out-of-the box with the Windows 8 app templates. By using ms-appx-web with our iFrame, we’re able to load locally-packaged content that runs in a web context. For more information, check out How to Reference Content on MSDN.

Tutorial

In this tutorial, we’re going to use the Google Maps API to display earthquake data from the U.S. Geological Survey. The code I’m using to access Google Maps and USGS can be found on the Google Developers Academy site, here. You can download the project here. Please see the end of the post for licensing information.

Set up

Before beginning, you’ll want to make sure your machine is all set up. To develop for Windows 8, you must be running Windows 8. You can download a 90-day evaluation copy here. In addition, you will need Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8 (or higher). The Express version is a free download. You can find it here.

Start developing your Windows 8 app today. Generation App has tons of great resources for developers. Sign up today for tips, great documentation, videos and more!

Create a blank project

The first step for this tutorial is to create a New Project in Visual Studio 2012. This will be a JavaScript project based on the Blank App template. Name your project “MapTutorial.”

Add a map.html/css/js

Now we’ll add the html, css and js file for our map frame that will be referenced from the default.hml page.

Right-click on your project (MapTutorial) in the Solution Explorer and go to Add –> New Item.

Add an HTML Page and call it map.html.

Follow the same process to add map.js and map.css so that your Solution Explorer looks like this:

Add scripts

Now we want to add references to our css and js files in map.html. Open up map.html and the following in the <head> tag:

[sourcecode language=”html”]
<!– map references –>
<link href=”/map.css” rel=”stylesheet” />
<script src=”/map.js”></script>
[/sourcecode]

Now we want to add the Google Maps API script. Before the <!– map references –>add the following:

[sourcecode language=”html”]
<!– Google Maps API reference –>
<script
src=”https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false&libraries=visualization”>
</script>
[/sourcecode]

So far, so good. There is one more script we’re going to add and that’s the earthquake data we’ll be pulling from the U.S. Geological Survey. After the <!– map references –>add the following:

[sourcecode language=”html”]
<!– USGS URL data source –>
<script src = “http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/feed/geojsonp/2.5/week”>
</script>
[/sourcecode]

Your <head> tag should look like this:

[sourcecode language=”html”]
<head>
<title></title>

<!– Google Maps API reference –>
<script src=”https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false&libraries=visualization”>
</script>

<!– mapframe references –>
<link href=”/map.css” rel=”stylesheet” />
<script src=”/map.js”></script>

<!– USGS URL data source –>
<script src=”http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/feed/geojsonp/2.5/week”></script>

</head>
[/sourcecode]

The last thing we’re going to do with map.html is add a div tag for where we want to display the map. Add the following div tag so the <body> looks like this:

[sourcecode language=”html”]
<body>
<div id=”mapdisplay”></div>
</body>
[/sourcecode]

At this point if you run your project, you should see a black page and “Content goes here” in the upper left corner.

Add logic

Now that we’ve got our project all set up, let’s add some logic to do something with the earthquake data we’re getting from USGS. I’ve made some changes to the Google Developer code to put things in the right order to work with Windows 8.

In eqfeed_callback , I’ve taken out the logic and put that into addMarkers () which is called from initialize() . In eqfeed_callback (which we need based on the USGS script), I’m saving the results into a global variable to access later. In addition, I’ve commented out setting the icon property for each point. You can uncomment it to see a different way to view the data.

Copy and paste (or write out) the following code in map.js:

[sourcecode language=”javascript”]
var map;
var dataResults;

function initialize() {
map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById(‘mapdisplay’), {
zoom: 3,
center: new google.maps.LatLng(40, -187.3),
mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.TERRAIN
});

addMarkers();
}

eqfeed_callback = function (results) {
dataResults = results;
}

function addMarkers () {
for (var i = 0; i < dataResults.features.length; i++) {
var quake = dataResults.features[i];
var coors = quake.geometry.coordinates;
var latLong = new google.maps.LatLng(coors[1], coors[0]);
var marker = new google.maps.Marker({
position: latLong,
map: map
//icon: getCircle(earthquake.properties.mag)
});
}
}

function getCircle(magnitude) {
return {
path: google.maps.SymbolPath.CIRCLE,
fillColor: ‘red’,
fillOpacity: .2,
scale: Math.pow(2, magnitude) / Math.PI,
strokeColor: ‘white’,
strokeWeight: .5
};
}

google.maps.event.addDomListener(window, ‘load’, initialize);
[/sourcecode]

In addition, copy and paste the following code into map.css:

[sourcecode language=”css”]
html, body, #mapdisplay {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
height: 100%;
}
[/sourcecode]

At this point, if you run the project again it should still be a black screen with “Content goes here” in the upper left corner. Don’t worry, we’re going to put content in our app in the next step!

Add an iFrame

Open default.html, if it isn’t already open. In the <body> we’re going to add an iFrame that uses map.html as the source (and a header title). Add the following code so the <body> looks like this:

[sourcecode language=”html”]
<body>
<h1>Google Maps API on Windows 8</h1>
<iframe id=”Map” src=”ms-appx-web:///map.html” style=”width:100%;height:100%;”></iframe>
</body>
[/sourcecode]

Run

Now the only thing left for us to do is run the app! You can use F5 or click the green triangle (that looks like a play button) on the Visual Studio tool bar:

At this point you should be seeing your app with a slippy Google Map on it and map markers for where earthquakes have occurred. Yay! You now have the Google Maps API working on Windows 8!! You can download the full project from my SkyDrive.

Portions of this page are reproductions and modifications based on work created and shared by Google and used according to terms described in the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License and Apache 2.0 License. You can find the original pages at Google Developers Academy –> Maps (—> JavaScript) –> Importing Data & Visualizing Data.