HackCon

People:

Wahab Owolabi (a16z)				Michelle Chen (Duke)				John Britton (Github education)
Sarah Wooders (MIT)					TJ LaGrow (QuackHacks)				Jean-Paul Breuer (Copenhacks) shirt contact
Zachary Liu (Princeton)				Linhchi Nguyen (Princeton)			Matt Hsu (BigRedHacks Cornell)
Cyrus Roshan (UT Dallas) 			Cami Williams (Clarifai)			Michael Ollukaren (HackGT)
Bobby Thakkar (IncubateX)			Smith Sopp (HackPSU)				Amreeta Duttchoudhary (HackGT)
Joao Moura (HackMonterey) MrDeny	Wilfried Esperat Hounyo (BrickHack)	Matt Young (HackPSU) VR talk
Meredith McNulty (HackFSU) matt 2	Eugene Chan USC (HackEDU)			Olivia Deng (HackEDU)
Justin Brezhnev (HackerFund)		Prithaj Nath (HackEDU)				Robert Eng (HackTech)

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Sponsorship: 3 Business Reasons. Huge market outside hackathons.
1. Developer Evangelism: Get developers excited about your platform and gather feedback and use cases.
-> Valuable Perks: Workshops/demos, distribution, interactions
2. Marketing: Raise brand awareness and/or change brand perception
-> Valuable Perks: Experiences, Branding position (where your logo is), Positive sharing
3. Recruitment: Bring valuable developers to your company
-> Valuable Perks: Resumes, GitHubs, Booths, Demos

Metrics:
1. Cost per Attendee: Bang for your buck. Minimize CPA
2. Attendee Value: Consider fit, difficulty and potential.
-> Will they be potential consumers? developers?
-> Targeted audience is in one room? Willing to pay much higher CPA if attendees are hard to reach.
3. Sponsor Landscape: Quantity, quality, value.
-> Are there many names next to mine?
4. Package Value: Am I getting my money's worth?
5. The Force (their gut): Does this feel like the event I should be sponsoring?
-> All evangelists talk to each other. Brand/individual reputation is absurdly important.

How do they pay for this?
-> Usually different people handle the sponsorship and the budget.
-> So you need to give evangelists resources and reasons to sponsor your event.
Businesses usually operate on quarterly budgets.
-> The two best times to get money are Quarter 1 and Quarter 4 (to get rid of it so they don't lose it)
Recruiting budgets for interns are HIGHLY SEASONAL (Fall) but full-time isn't.

Types of Sponsors:
1. Financial: Trades cash for value, typical.
2. Presenting: A co-host/presenting partner. Usually co-brands the event with you.
-> You have power over them b/c you know your audience - don't give up control.
3. Anchor Brands: A company that other, similar brands look for when sponsoring events.
-> It's a positive thing to put good names on there, compels others to sponsor. ON THE SITE ASAP
4. Strategic Partners: Companies that help you with marketing, distribution, legitimacy etc
-> Y Combinator, General Assembly, Tech Crunch they send speakers that send a lot of value.
5. In Kind: Companies that donate goods or services in lieu of cash sponsorship. Cool shit, food, drinks.

Groundwork: Sponsors are like investors: you should approach them when you're doing well.
1. A Vision: Where are you going with this?
2. A Website: Hard to get sponsors without one.
3. Pre-Registrations: Signal it'll be a successful event.
4. A Venue: Should have progress to show.
5. Other Sponsors: Good name sponsors are good, not Clorox.
Prepare an itemized budget for the event before getting sponsors, so you know how much you need to raise.

Design a good sponsorship prospectus. IMPORTANT
1. Standard Tiers Document: 1-2 pages long, overview of event and sponsorship tiers.
2. PowerPoint Decks: 5-10 slides long. Provide an overview of the event and team. Best for: cold emailing, goes into DEPTH!
3. Custom Proposals: 1-5 pages long. Provides an overview of the event and outlines a custom package and price. Best for: not cash
Things to always include: event name, event date, event location, projected attendance, website URL, contact email/phone

Sponsorship Tiers:
1. How many tiers should I have? Have 3 simple tiers. 1x Reasonable, 1x Moderate, 1x Expensive
2. How much should my tiers be? No easy answer. Use CPA, your budget, and instinct. $50/person is high, $30 is low/medium
3. What perks should apply to each tier? Sponsors will value whatever YOU SAY is valuable.

Following a process: MLH Sponsorship Process
1. Set targets and do research. Figure out which companies you want to sponsor and where the decision makers are
-> Tools of the trade: LinkedIn, data.com, CEOEmail.com. Ask for email intro to big shots
2. Get In Touch. Get an intro from someone in your network or send a well-crafted, thoughtful email.
-> Tweet at a random recruiter! LinkedIn, Facebook, Google are useful.
3. Exploratory Phone Call. Get decision makers on the phone and find out what their success metrics are.
-> Tools of the trade: Sell your team and your story. Ask about past sponsorships & their sponsor BUDGET! Let them do the talking.
4. Make a proposal. Send over a well-crafted proposal and an explanation of why it fits their company's needs
-> Set a deadline, ask for a follow up call, less is more. Take what they say and advertise your packages in that flavor.
5. Follow Up. with all prospective sponsors and keep the event on their radar. Have new info to tell them!
-> RelateIQ, Boomerang, followup.cc. "Hey what's up?" NO! "Hey! We just got 1000 signups, venue's locked down, excited, you coming?"
-> Boomerang is cool cuz you can boomerang the email back to remind yourself to follow up on emails.

Things to Watch Out For: not iterating, not practicing, not highlighting what's useful for a given sponsor.
Always under-promise and over-deliver. Always follow up with your sponsor: post-event surveys, thank you note, event recap/photos.
Sell your team & expertise. If you make them look good in front of their boss, they'll definitely come back and sponsor again.
Be regular and timely in your communication before, during and after the event. Custom-email sponsors before event, make sure they had a good time during and after. Be willing to negotiate, but don't give away the keys to the castle.
It's never too early to start getting sponsorships, but it's tough to keep them excited about the event.
Use a standard sponsorship contract... We do invoices for every sponsor.
Gottfried: "Sales in general is very weird and awkward. 'Hey, I want you to give me $10,000'. You just need to get used to it"

Common Pitfalls:
- Maybe's. better to get a no.
- Not understanding payment cycles.
- Not valuing what you're selling.
- Not introducing new sponsor-handlers. "HEY I'm in charge now!"

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Advice:
Get littleBits in the Rutgers MakerSpace
Attend littleBits educators conferences! [email protected]
Help-Desk is a good idea that should be a good thing
Budget for generator if necessary - wifi: 2.5x #attendees
Noticeboards/dedicated screens. PA systems
Everyone is a community manager, everyone is an inventor/mentor
Go out of your way to welcome the noobs
Don't be myspace tom (meaninglessly positive), or a creeper
Be a matchmaker: connect ppl in community to each other

Who are you looking for? You need people who have no idea what hacking is - bring interesting and diverse perspectives
How do you find them? Recruiting and outreach to different departments and communities.
Have conversations. Curiosity > Passion > Experience. Enable others to be successful.
Ask what resources they need. Ask what skills they want to develop. Ask what goals they have.
Tell sponsors to show as much code as possible, we're developers. We need _Demos_
Culture and values are cool things to convey, but not what the office is like or what it's like to work there.
Target people from non-CS backgrounds and people who feel unprepared by:
-> hosting workshops before hackathons and showing them a preview of experiences had by people they identify with

Lines: 6 tips
1. Logical start/end/location
2. Consistent locations/directions/setups
3. Organizers should be serving food
4. Make multiple lines (multi-threaded)
5. Focus on placement of food
6. Release your hackers in groups

MedHacks: We were told we'd get the intersection of two sets (tech/med), but we got the union by telling everyone about it.

Niko: You're a bus and you need to avoid obstacles and stoplights.
- Plan ahead, find the right people, align your interests, establish your value proposition, ask "why"
  So find out what your university wants and keep updating them on your progress, be persistent yet polite and flexible

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Data PPT:
Fundamentals: best hackathons focus on basics: food/drinks/snacks and opening/closing ceremonies
- 13% of EECS ppl are women and 25% of hackathon attendees are women. Reach out to people outside CS + EE!
- 92% of events have less than 600 hackers. 5% of women and 11% of men prefer 600+, 70-80% of men/women prefer 100-600
- Hackathons feel stale to organizers, but most attendees are first time hackers; 92% of season attendees go to one event/season

Imposter syndrome affects everybody. 21% of men and 38% of women list "not feeling prepared" as reason not to go to hackathon.
Don't emphasize prizes -> market it as a great place for beginners
Show off your code of conduct -> makes people feel safer about the event
Make sure you have team building sessions during and workshops before the event
African Americans less likely to come without team, and women more likely to make teams there
Black hackers are 153% less likely to win

When people leave communities, its often because there are not that many engaging events over the year - look into MLH localhost
Big problem with hackathons: Marketing engine goes down. Make it valuable to follow you - like trips to other ones

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Carol Smith - Community Building Workshop
1. The way they're set up
- Codes of conduct and standards of behavior: the way the community interacts
- Documentation and public artifacts can foster a good or bad community
- Communication channels are important. Policies and licenses
- Getting started guides and ways for new contributors to feel welcome. Inclusivity
2. The way they grow and sustain themselves
- Ways new members join and feel included
- No knowledge is specific to one person or a small group of people
- Documentation of new ideas, policies and features
- Problems are dealt with quickly
- Contributions are rewarded
3. Be a great community leader
- Your public persona. Your fostering of the community. Your contributions to the community.
- Public speaking. Your "message". Community management: how do you answer questions and support others? -> Delegation!
- Send this talk to all the iLab assistants. SUPER IMPORTANT
- COOL IDEA: HAVE THESE ACTIONABLE LIST BRAINSTORMS AT USACS MEETINGS!!!!!!!!!!

Actionable List:
1. Week (7/3)
a. Share what I learned at HackCon with the whole board
b. Document what I learned at HackCon for the community
c. Reach out to Lars/Biggie about community building workshop for iLab assistants
2. Month (7/26)
a. Meet in person with board to brainstorm more actionable items
b. Get some speakers set up for Hack Nights with cool topics
c. Reach out to Justin about mentors and Mukesh about incubator partnerships
3. 6 Months (12/26)
a. Have these actionable list brainstorms at USACS meetings
b. Connect with leaders of other organizations for event collaboration and PR++
c. Mold iLab assistants into awesome, awesome community builders.
4. Year (6/26)
a. Parter with igniteCS/HackerFund on mentorship program - learn and remodel if necessary
b. Set up maintainable routes for continuous communication between CS/Eng organizations
c. Empower the new community leaders and guide them in the right direction

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Mentorship: Training program from his hacker mentor thing HackerFund, and mentors who train other mentors -> wait on igniteCS

Hey! Whats up? How's your project going? -> will help people understand the problems they don't know about yet
Clone MIT's ticketing slack bot and work on request flagging -> Mentors who will help a lot vs. bug fixers
Have mentors have a physical table and have volunteers delegate mentors to teams who request them (on slack or in person)
Don't tell them to google things -> Show them how to google things, and they'll understand that THAT's how you debug (nav bar tale)
Consider spikes of times when people need mentors -> Initial ideation mentors, 2am support mentors, pre-submission finale mentors
Walk around NON-STOP and ask people if they're okay with Internet, Mentorship, Food, ideation and general experience
Focus on training mentors to help people with the project build process. e.g. build this first, then this, not 5 things at once
Have ideation workshops! Split people into groups of what they want to do, don't have people pitch what they want to do. Whiteboards
-> Have stages of ideation: spam ideas, then narrow it down to 3, then pick 1 and pitch it
Gamify the process by having the users submit "yes you helped me" -> don't have prizes b/c that will lower quality.
-> Have them come back routinely. Build strong relationships through consistent ticketing.
Mentors are the driving force of the education at the hackathons -> take care of them, make sure they stay up, nap, etc.
Have mentors walk around the workshops and help people who fall behind? One mentor per team, etc...
Workshops: tell us what you want to learn on the application process and we do the most popular ones!
101s at the beginning and more complex ones in the middle. Open it up to the public (great developers) and have Intro workshops b4
Set up remote workshops for those who want to show something beforehand.

We're a non profit so we can give mentors service hours - talk to whoever's in charge of signing off on hours.
On-boarding mentors - background checks, Rutgers may be able to do this -> [email protected]
HackRU -> bit.ly/requestmentors -> Get as many industry mentors as we want for free whenever we want
USACS -> Apply to be mentors! Tell USACS about continuous mentorship from industry.

Google CS Research google.com/edu/resources/computerscience/research/
HackerFund hacker.fund bit.ly/requestmentors
MIT Open Source Code http://code.hackmit.org/

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Workshop: Education
Hackathons welcome beginners, nurtures technical growth and creates mentorship structures in the community.
Columbia has open-source dev curricula that it teaches in the week prior to the hackathon.
Hackathons tap the existing energy of the environment, immediate implementation and reward
There exists an abundance of resources: mentors, developers, sponsors, community, etc.
Education depends on resources, value, scale -> take theoretical ideas and mold them.
2 Driving Points: Be thoughtful and be intentional. 5 steps:
1. Identify Audience: who is your audience? what subset of that is the educational audience? Informed by resources and scale.
2. Scope Content: what's the most valuable thing for your audience to learn?
-> Web development - practical, expansive, flexible, scalable. Personal website, front end, back end, APIs
-> What do they already know? What do they want to learn? Be practical first. App Dev (APIs, UI) > CS (OOP, Algo)
3. Determine Format: what educational format is best for the given audience and content scope? e.g. lecture, self-paced, hybrid
-> Lecture: familiar, scalable, but too slow/fast, too easy/hard
-> Self-paced: students sit together on their laptops, TAs float around. Fixes slow/fast, easy/hard, but not really engaging.
-> Hybrid: micro-lectures interspersed with self-paced time, has the pros and cons of both worlds depending on time weaving.
4. Create Curriculum: write or curate high-quality curriculum: bug-free and unambiguous.
-> http://learn.devfe.st/ USE THIS SHIT IT'S DOPE. Can start from different levels by cloning specific branches
-> What they do: 6 days a week, have a big space broken into 6 subspaces with 20 TAs floating around. Partner with other clubs.
-> Motivator to do the tracks: stamps for completing levels that enter you into raffles.
-> Resources: Codecademy, Flask tutorial, community tutorials, books
5. Execute and Iterate: do it, it'll never be better - good bad ugly - collect statistics
-> Action: Develop your own educational model version zero