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At MindSea, we have a passion for creating things.
It’s been an honour to share this passion with others during our MindSea Hackathons. We always have a strong turnout and we couldn’t be happier with the outcome. People from all levels of expertise participate, including some writing their very first mobile app. At the end of the night six teams present, each having produced something great in the 12 hours available.
Should your company host a hackathon of your own?
Here are the three biggest reasons we’ve found to take on this rewarding challenge:
MindSea is made of people who build things for fun. We’re also constantly looking for new talent. While it’s not the goal of the event, we’d be nuts not to keep hackathon attendees in mind when hiring. Someone who wants to code during their downtime is a kindred spirit! Also, while we’re pretty strict about 40 hour weeks, a hackathon is a great place to see people perform under pressure. It’s not foolproof, but someone’s performance during an event like this can be more telling than an interview.
The local development community is important to us, and it’s something we want to help nourish. We’re happiest when we see other people doing interesting work around us, and we expect others feel the same. Our hope is that keeping the community vibrant helps our area retain talent. The way we see it, the more events taking place the better! That said, we know putting on events can be time consuming and expensive. That’s why we feel we need to host events as well as attend them.
We all have our social circles, and it’s sometimes hard to find out what’s going on outside of them. Hosting a hackathon is a great way to meet people you otherwise wouldn’t. When attending a hackathon, you’re often too busy making something to mingle. As a host, you have more opportunities to be introduced to new people and ideas. That last part is important: while new business opportunities are always a welcome outcome to networking events, being inspired by someone you’ve just met can be invaluable.
We also thought it’d be helpful to share some tips about the event format. These aren’t one-size-fits-all rules, but they do lead to the type of hackathon we most want to participate in.
We hope these ideas help motivate you to host your own event. While it does require planning and effort, the payoff is well worth it. Finding new talent is one great reason to run a a hackathon, but it can be even more enriching to focus on giving back to the community and being inspired by the people you meet. If you have any questions, or if you’d like to share your hackathon story, please reach out to us at hello@mindsea.com. We’d be happy to hear we’ve helped to spread the joy of hackathons!