What is a hackathon?

Hackathons are "time-bounded participant-driven events that are organized to foster specific goals or objectives. [...] People that participate in an event often have different backgrounds and bring different expertise. Their primary motivation to join an event is to work on a shared team project that interests them [...]. During the event, teams attempt to create an artifact that can be shared with other participants."

Falk, J., Nolte, A., Huppenkothen, D., Weinzierl, M., Gama, K., Spikol, D., Tollerud, E., Chue Hong, N., Knäpper, I., & Hayden, L. B. (2024). The future of hackathon research and practice. IEEE Access 12, 133406 - 133425. (PDF)

Is this for me?

Do you have experience organizing or managing participant-driven events? Are you interested in studying how people collaborate? If yes, then join our community or attend our next event! If you’re interested in organizing an event, we offer resources and a supportive community of experienced individuals to help you succeed. You can find more information about our next workshop below.

Next

Our next workshop

Copenhagen, Oct 20-24, 2025

Hack the Hackathon 5 will be held as a hybrid meeting in at the Datalab of Copenhagen University Library, Copenhagen, Denmark and online.

More information will be available here soon.

Join us for HTH5

Next

Previous workshops

Hack the Hackathon 1 - Lorentz Center, Leiden, The Netherlands, December 6 to 10, 2021. (held online)

Hack the Hackathon 2 - Flatiron Institute, New York, NY, USA and online, October 3 to 7, 2022.

Hack the Hackathon 3 - SDG Solution Space, Geneva, Switzerland and online, November 6 to 10, 2023.

Hack the Hackathon 4 - Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA and online, November 18 to 22, 2024.

Next

The team

Get to know the people behind Hack the Hackathon 5.

Allissa Dillman

Allissa Dillman

CEO
BioData Sage
Bethesda, MD, USA

Jeanette Falk

Jeanette Falk

Assistant Professor
Aalborg University Copenhagen
Copenhagen, Denmark

Joseph Gum

Joseph Gum

Data Stewardship Coordinator
NSF NCAR - The National Center for Atmospheric Research
San Diego, CA, USA

Mari Hanikat

Mari Hanikat

CEO and Member of the Board
Garage48
Tallinn, Estonia

Daniela Huppenkothen

Daniela Huppenkothen

Assistant Professor
University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Ines Knäpper

Ines Knäpper

Innovation Lead
World Economic Forum
Geneva, Switzerland

Alexander Nolte

Alexander Nolte

Assistant Professor
Eindhoven University of Technology
Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Lavinia Paganini

Lavinia Paganini

PhD Candidate
Eindhoven University of Technology
Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Daniel Spikol

Daniel Spikol

Associate Professor
University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen, Denmark

Cleo Schulten

Cleo Schulten

PhD Candidate
University of Duisburg-Essen
Duisburg, Germany

Contributors

We are glad to give a shout out to organizations and individuals that have helped us over the years to make Hack the Hackathon what it is today.