Communication and Managing Hacker Teams and Mentors

By Mustafa Sherif

A hackathon is about passionate people coming together to create innovative and impactful solutions. It’s a challenge to have diverse people from different backgrounds and geographical locations walking toward one vision and working to achieve one common goal in a short amount of time as a hackathon. Therefore, communication is key in hackathons. Clear and simple communication is one of the key factors in making a successful hackathon and achieving the aim and goals of a hackathon. In this chapter, you will read about and learn how to communicate and tell a hackathon story before, during, and after a hackathon with different target groups through different physical and digital channels. You will also learn how to bring people together to build a hacker team and how to bring skilled and experienced people to mentor and guide hacker teams. Lastly, you will explore best practices from local, national, and...

The importance of communication

Communication is one of the key factors in making a successful hackathon and achieving the aim and goals of a hackathon. Communication as a tool can be very powerful and help a lot in achieving hackathon goals, or it can backfire and cause misunderstanding and unclarity, which affects the achievement of hackathon goals and repatriation of hackathon organizers. Being clear and simple in communication serves many important fundamental purposes and helps to achieve many goals:

• Raise awareness about various local and global challenges on different levels – for example, individuals, organizations, communities, cities, and the entire planet – communicating about the climate crisis and raising awareness about it. Hackathon organizers can spread a message and communicate the vision, mission, and values that they stand for.
• Attract people to participate in the hackathon as hackers to create solutions to different challenges.
• Attract...

Communication channels

So, what communication channels work best, and which ones to choose for the hackathon outcome you are looking for? As we all know, there are hundreds of different communication channels, physical and digital. People in different countries use different platforms to communicate for different purposes. Generations use different channels to communicate. You might notice that a younger person in your family or in a family that you know uses different platforms than what you as an adult use to communicate. Sometimes, it differs in using the same app but in different ways, and so on. WhatsApp in some countries is used as a mobile texting application for family and close friends only, while in some other countries it’s used as a communication app for not only family and friends but also for work colleagues in an organization.

On top of these differences in using communication channels between generations, nations, and organizations, every couple of months...

Communication with hackers and mentors

In this section, we will focus on hackers and mentors as hacker community members.

Hacker communication

Hackers are individuals from different backgrounds who believe in hackathons as a method and process to create useful solutions in a short amount of time. Many other reasons make a person sign up for a hackathon; for example, to collaborate and network with new people, make a better world by creating impactful solutions, get a hackathon and teamwork experience, get a certification for their CV, win a prize, make their idea come true (in case there is an acceleration program such as Build For Earth), and many more.

At the national and international hackathons that Hack for Earth organizes, we don’t specify and select one type of people to join hackathons. We always advocate for diversity in competencies in teams. We want to include people and bring people together from different nations, genders, backgrounds, knowledge, and so...

Creating the right hackathon vibe in your channels of communication

After creating a communication plan and identifying the who, why, where, what, when, and starting to execute this plan, a foundation for community interaction is built. All different communication channels are there and can be used based on their purpose. There are key aspects that we should be aware of when it comes to creating a hackathon vibe and community interaction. Let’s look at these next.

• Create a code of conduct for the hacker community. A code of conduct is defined by rules, values, principles, and behaviors that guide people from different backgrounds toward building a hacker community and a common vision. An example of a code of conduct could be never using bad language during a hackathon, with other team members, and in communication in general. By having a code of conduct, both hackathon organizers and participants will have a common ground and understanding about what community they will...

Summary

In this chapter, we went on a journey of how to communicate and how to build an active and creative hackathon community. We talked about the importance of a clear, simple, and flexible communication plan to communicate the hackathon mission and goals to different target groups of people. We covered how to create a communication plan, identify the whom, why, where, what, and when, and start to execute this plan. We highlighted the different communication channels, both digital and physical, that can be used to communicate internally with a hackathon organizer team and externally with different target groups; for example, hackers, mentors, and a general public audience. We have covered how to bring together hackers and mentors in one place to build a community of passionate people on a digital platform. Lastly, we shared experiences from different local, national, and international hackathons about how to create hackathon vibes so that hackathon community members will interact...