Hack the Hackathon
An unconference series and interdisciplinary community exploring scientific collaboration, learning, and civic engagement through hackathons.
Hack the Hackathon is a global community of hackathon organizers, participants, and researchers. We come from many corners of society, including academia, industry, non-profits, and government organizations. What unites us is a deep curiosity about how humans collaborate and build things together and the belief that hackathons and similar events can help us solve important societal and scientific problems and that they can aid us in creating supportive and equitable communities around shared challenges.
We are a loose collective, partly organized via Discord and through a yearly “Hack the Hackathon” workshop. If, like us, you are excited to share insights, discuss current practices, address open challenges, and explore the future of hackathons, we invite you to join us!
Virtual hacking
The original Hack the Hackathon had to be moved online with only a few days notice due to a COVID lockdown, but we made the best of things anyway, and learned a lot about running online conferences in the process.
Hack the hackathon is not just work, but also a lot of fun!
Welcome to HtH4!
Organizers welcoming in-person (and online) participants to Hack the Hackathon 4 in San Diego
The Vibe Hive
How do we provide comfortable spaces for hackathon participants to take a break, have discussions and recharge? The Vibe Hive team was prototyping solutions at Hack the Hackathon 3 in Geneva.
Have you come to steal my hack ideas?
Hacking at CERN's IdeaSquare, which includes an old red London bus to work in.
Hack the Hackathon 2
HtH2 was our first hybrid workshop, with the in-person workshop in New York at the Flatiron Institute.
Hack the Hackathon poster
The poster for Hack the Hackathon 1, made by the Lorentz Centre's awesome graphic designer. It is the origin of our workshop's obsession with eggs.
Organiser selfie with the virtual participants
Checking in
Project discussions can happen everywhere: over coffee, or standing right next to the entrance.
Hack the Hackathon Swag!
At HtH3, the local makerspace folks made us personalised coasters to remember the event
Sharing successes and failures
Sharing hackathon outcomes is an essential part of every event. Whether the hack was successful or not, we'll cheer either way.
Final stretch
Tired (but happy) faces at the end of Hack the Hackathon 2 in New York.
Hackathon organiser alignment
Is there a type of person who likes organising hackathons? Are there different types of organisers, and do they have different character traits that filter into the event organisation? At Hack the Hackathon 3, a team set out to find out.
Hacking hardware
Figuring out what participants do is crucial for studying hackathons. Here, Hack the Hackathon participants are exploring the deployment of sensors during hackathons to gain insights about participants' movements.
Hacking International Diplomacy
At Hack the Hackathon 3, we were invited to visit the UN Libraries and demonstrate a hackathon for them focused on international sustainable development goals.
Hacking international development
Ongoing hacking at the UN Libraries.
Hacking @ CERN
At Hack the Hackathon 3, we spent a day at CERN's IdeaSquare to hack on better hackathon tools and methods.
Hybrid hacking
Making our events hybrid has always been a crucial component of Hack the Hackathon, because it allows us to test new ideas for making hybrid hackathons work.
Hybrid Hacking
a good tech setup is key to making hybrid hackathons work
Tasty hacks
Sometimes, hacks need to be fun! Here, participants 3D-printed the Hack the Hackathon logos to make chocolate moulds out of them later on.
Facilitating team formation
Team formation at hackathons is hard! Here, a team is prototyping physical tokens to help teams find other participants.
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 et al. (2025)
What are Participant-Driven Events?
Participant-driven events are events where the participants have a significant role in shaping the event. Typically, organizers provide overall structures, activities and facilitation, whereas the participants collectively decide on topics and content. Hackathons are a type of participant-driven event. Unconferences are another good example. Unconferences implement a high-level structure for discussions and a theme or challenge, but actual topics are generated by the participants on the spot. Breakout groups are formed dynamically based on interest and relevance.
What We Do
Workshops
We organize a yearly hybrid (in-person and online) workshop to bring together the many communities interested in organizing and studying hackathons and related events. Explore our previous workshops, or sign up for the next one!
Explore workshops
Virtual Community
Because workshops only happen once a year, we have a thriving community on Discord to keep in touch in between. Here, we build community, hang out and share resources regularly. Come and join us there!
Join us
Resources
We collect resources, tools, best practices and research across our different communities to continuously improve the hackathon experience for our participants across academia, industry and society.
Explore resourcesOur Story
Hack the Hackathon began with the realization that hackathons are interdisciplinary and run in diverse spaces and communities. Two separate groups were working on hackathon planning kits, both supported by funding from the Sloan Foundation. These groups were brought together, and the first Hack the Hackathon was born.
We wanted to create a space for anyone interested in organizing such events to collaborate, share resources, and learn from each other. We also realized that researchers of hackathons were missing a venue to come together, share their newest results both with each other and the community of organizers, and recruit organizers for future studies.
Meet the Community
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 come and join our community or attend our next event! We'd love to have you! If you’re interested in organizing an event, we offer resources and a supportive community of experienced individuals to help you succeed.
Join the CommunityJoin our next event
Hello from Copenhagen! We are currently at Hack the Hackathon 5. Stay tuned for more information about Hack the Hackathon 6, which we are already hard at work planning. If you want to stay up to date, check back here.
Next EventFunders and Supporters
We thank all the amazing organizations that power “Hack the Hackathon”. Their ongoing support helped us to build this community and helps us to keep it going. The logos are in alphabetical order.
