As the title said. I have participated in several hackathons over the last decade (10 hackathons).
And a thing I have noticed is that, in the last hackathons I went, winners were selected based on the inclusivity of their idea and not on their ability to build such idea.
To clarify, this were blockchain hackathons (I don’t know if this can be relevant)
Examples
So I don’t just sound like someone complaining, let me give examples.
In one big blockchain hackathon organized by Eth Global (a very big group) one of the 10 winners was a project for helping women and people of color. They presented only a presentation.
In another smaller hackathon, one of the winners was a great idea on how to fight censorship to help LGBTQ+ access the information they need in current times (and this idea was very well thought, I really like it). Again, they only presented slides, but didn’t have any code at all.
My problem with it
It may be something new, or maybe I’m outdated but when I go to a hackathon, I expect people to actually build a proof of concept and present it.
I always thought that was the idea, get together and see what you can build in 24/48 hours. And at the end, the winners are selected by a mix of how original their idea was + their ability to actually build it.
When I see a team winning by presenting a project without having actually built enough to show it, I feel cheated. It feels like I’m watching Shark Tank or any show where participants try to sell the idea to VCs, instead of a programming tournament.
The fact that hundreds of people spend one or two all nighters planning a project that they can actually do in that time, fighting bugs, designing the site, testing their functionality and struggling with all the process of software engineering just to see that the winner didn’t actually do anything of that and proposed an idea that maybe it can not even be done in a hackathon, is frustrating.
I want to clarify, my problem is not that I didn’t win, my problem is that I always look up to the winners, I want to see their project, how it works, how amazing it is, how they were able to build it in such a short notice, and when I see that they didn’t actually build anything, I have the problem.
When I participated in GameJams, having a submission was always a requirement, and I could play hundreds of amazing games, original or not. And the winner usually was someone that make a game from which I can learn a lot.
So, coming again to my question:
Have hackathons became too political? Is it only a blockchain hackathon thing?
I really enjoy going to hackathons, but this have been a bit frustrating between the last ones.
Yes people without working code should not win hackathons, period. And yes there is probably an inclusivity win because those are real challenges and it’s good to encourage solutions to those problems and participation from marginalized groups. As much as it seems marginalized groups are being supported in the industry, it’s incredibly hard for them to actually succeed. It’s obvious that sometimes these groups get “token” victories but those victories rarely translate outside places they can be seen and pushed for publicity, for example they don’t translate into CEO positions or high level tech positions very well. It’s problematic in the opposite way than you might think, because we tokenize the victories we don’t translate them into real large scale benefits for the groups. But small victories for these individuals do still matter.