Back in 2020, I hosted a STEMGeeks Hackathon that raised 12,623.370 HIVE (~$4,000 at the time) from donations.
One of the biggest results of the hackathon was HiveOnboard by @roomservice, coming in first place. In my opinion, this was a huge win for Hive and dramatically improved our onboarding experience.
This time around I want to greatly increase the exposure of the Hackathon outside of Hive. I am reaching out to journalists and want to announce the Hackathon on many tech platforms outside of Hive and potentially even buy ads.
I plan on submitting a proposal to fund the prize pool rather than depend on donations from users. Although donations will be welcomed, I believe the DHF would be a good source of funding for this project that has the potentially to reach a lot of people outside of Hive and potentially create great improvements for our ecosystem.
With a bigger budget, I was thinking I should have more than three winning entries, spreading the prize pool to more contestants. I considered simple changes like 5 winners or even 10, or even base it on how many contestants there are.
The first hackathon was set for 2 weeks, I am considering extending this to one month or even longer. I think 2 weeks is a good time to have enough time for a decent prototype but it does limit how much functionality is available.
This time around, I am thinking about two phases. The first phase will keep a lot of participants, where the second phase will give more time to the final contestants to add more functionality and make more progress on their project. Each phase would have their own prize pool, everyone continuing to the second phase would win a portion of the prize pool.
I do know most people like to wait until the end to announce their project to keep it secret until the very end. This would change that strategy to some degree but potentially open each project to far more constructive feedback for the final entry.
I do however have some decisions to make, and I welcome everyone's opinion on this.
If you want to express your opinion, please leave a message in the comments answering any or all of these questions:
- How much should I request from the DHF for the prize pool?
- Should I create a proposal for marketing the hackathon?
- How many winners should be eligible for the prize pool?
- One phase or two phases?
- Got any ideas to make the Hackathon better?
- Would you be participating?