10 Brain boosts for a Hackathon

[ChrisPope]

Let's talk about hackathons. You may know them as codefest. You may prefer the term hackfest or hackday. We at ServiceNow refer to these occasions as our CreatorCon or HackNow events. Whatever you like to call them, the hackathon is thankfully now a part of the way we in the software engineering industry approach learning, collaboration and group-based innovation.

Thinking about why we label hackathons with the -athon end suffix drawn from the word marathon, I found this definition online…

-athon (suffix): occurring as the final element in compounds which have the general sense of an event or contest, drawn out to unusual length, often until a prearranged goal is reached.

Well you get the picture; we have made the term hackathon part of our dedicated technology language set. So then, thinking pragmatically about the way we stage them, what are our top ten pieces of advice to help fuel your brain at the next ServiceNow hackathon you happen to attend?

1. Hackathons are a hands-on, practical opportunity to work with not just existing ServiceNow platform technology, but also next-generation platform release preview functionality. Make sure you make the most of this future-functionality aspect.
2. A hackathon is a great opportunity to build code in a competitive setting and environment. While this is not always truly representative of what life might be like back in your office and workplace, this is in fact a good thing as this scenario can help to sharpen skills based upon even more stringent guidelines and shorter time frames than usual. For most people, this is something that can then be taken back to the workplace and applied.
3. A hackathon   is a wider opportunity to learn from other developers and non-developers from different firms who may bring an entirely new approach and attitude to workflow.
4. A hackathon is a chance for your employer to validate existing training and skills investment and explore ways to expand your total realm of competencies.
5. A hackathon is an opportunity for you to show your employer how much you want to break the mould and bring new insight, innovations and functions to your workplace.
6. A hackathon is chance for you to get to know vendors (in this case ServiceNow, but we realise you will go to other events) and sponsors. These connections will almost always serve you well in the future.
7. A hackathon can be an overwhelming experience. Once you do start work on the day, make sure you set yourself attainable goals so that you and your team can come out of the event with the most productive experience possible.
8. A hackathon is designed to impart a lot of information quickly. So that you don't feel like you're drinking from a firehose, make sure you have done as much homework as possible before you attend in terms of technical scope and platform breadth. This way you won't spend the hackathon learning what you could have picked up comparatively quickly beforehand on your own. Use the hackathon time to fill in all the gaps in your knowledge, not expose them.
9. A hackathon is a carefully staged tightly scheduled event. Because of this very fact you should try to arrive early, ask lots of questions, talk to everyone (even if that's out of your comfort zone), stay late if there's a chance to network, be enthused, smile and enjoy it. Hackathons (ServiceNow ones for sure) are always a good thing because it doesn't matter how much experience you have, you can still learn and create something.
10. Hackathons are designed to make you feel good. This means you'll probably be getting branded T-shirts, pizza, cookies, soda and beer; what's not to like about all that?

So then with all that advice and information download in mind, be sure to check out the next ServiceNow CreatorCon at Knowledge17. We hope to see you at our next collective, code-fuelled celebration and now we know that you'll be primed to get as much as possible out of it.

Chris.