(note: These notes are from the organizer's perspective)
Pros:
- Not much pre-training required to fill the tech illiteracy.
- Natural collaborative atmosphere (The room will be filled with hackers and the energy you get from the environment and people can't really compare to virtual events)
- Allows participants to new people outside of their hacking group.
- Travel
Cons:
- Finding event space
- Cost (infra, meals, staff, travel)
TIP:
- Create one .ICS that has all calendar block so you don't need to create multiple invites for training and meetings.
Pros:
- "Free" (for the most parts)
- Low barrier to entry. Organizers can try to invite anyone from anywhere.
Cons:
- Tech literacy (at least for the softwares the event will be leveraging) need to be addressed before hand with trainings.
- Low commitment rate
- We've seen people bail out at the last minute and saw teams having to scramble to find people with the right skills
- Needing to emphasize on collabrative atmosphere (such as turning the video on. Allowing each other to speak and take turns sharing their screen)
- Requiring Consent from participants for recorded contents
Pros:
- Similar to in-person
Cons:
- Timezones between in-person and virtual attendees.
- Effort to make sure the hackathon experience is engaging for both groups.
Prizes? Rounds across multiple hackathons? For learning? Career Building?
These are some of the questions you should consider when hosting a hackathon. This might determine which sort of participants you can expect.