Note: There is no AI written english in this. Everything here is hand typed by Grace. And if it has grammer and spelling mistakes, you are welcome to point it out to me in person, otherwise so be it. I am human.

This is all my knowledge down in how to run a large scale hackathon. This is how I would train the individual people, the questions that I would ask to the people assigned to each role prior to the hackathon, and throughts and annotations that I have to certain questions.

A Hackathon is a event where coders spend some dedicated time to create a project and large events like this takes a lot of moving pieces. In the four years that I have now worked with MadHacks as a MadHacks Coordinator twice, a hacker prior, and a mentor after. I had either did the work for or touched all these pieces so much so to be able to expain exactly how each role works and how it fits into the bigger picture of running a general hackathon. These are the roles that I had created in Aug 27 2023 based on a todo list of the coordinators who ran MadHacks before me, while I was a hacker, and were implemented one of the years that I was a coordinator. To those of you who still have access to the document where I orginally wrote up these roles, the version history on google docs of me spending days trying to figure out the best split and grouping of very vague tasks. This is the configuration that I had created and implemented so that with every person doing their part, puts together to make the hackathon happen. And it worked, but with the knowledge I have know, the roles definitly needs to get revamped.

These roles I wrote with Madhacks in mind, but can be applied to any Hackathon.

How to use: Someone needs to be assigned to each header. A person can take on more than one header.

Role Structure: One Hackathon Manager that oversees everything.

Logistic Team Lead
- Responsible for every header under logistics (except judging)
Judging Team Lead
- Responsible for Judging.
Tech Team Lead
- Responsible for any code/technology to make the hackathon happen.
Marketing Team Lead
- Responsible for any graphic, any marketing, volinteer and judging, and sponsor coordinating.
Finance Team Lead
- Responsible for makeing sure we don't spend more than budget.

Hackathon

Outreach Team (Everybody)

Cold emailing: The first email should be without any links or any images to actually get results
Carreer fairs: Are the best way to get companies on board
If you have companies that have sponsored before, then ask if they would be willing to donate to the hackathon again

Logistics Team

Venue

Location and Time

What date will the hackathon run?
Is the building reserved for the days that you want?

Email the building manager, find out if the building is reserved. Try to find a map of the building a figure out what rooms you are looking to book and keep unlocked throughout the hackathon. This email needs ask for avaliable dates to book the building, a list of room numbers expected to use, expected duration of event from x:xxam to x:xxpm on the expected weekend.
Are there any conficts with the date (football games, community events, holidays)?

Having it run at the same time as the football game means people will leave and come back to the hackathon. Also it means that there is no parking in any of the public lots. It also means that you have to find extra parking lots not used by the football game for people who are driving out of state to attend.

Sponsorship Packet Create / Update

Generically speaking how many hackers are you planning?
Does the Sponsorship packet highest tier reflect a third of the budget?
Are there statistics to update in that packet?
Does the packet make sense on its own?
Spelling errors?
Did you have someone else look over it before sending it to the person who is updating the website?

Reserving Building

Have you emailed the building managers of the building you want?
Are there any rules/regulations for using that building?
Where can people eat?
Where can people hack?
Is there enough space for people to hack?
Day of: How will you deal with trash?
Day of: How will you deal with security of the building?
If anything were to go wrong during the event building wise- who to contact?
Is the police aware of the hackathon? Knowning that the police know is a safety measure. If anything were to go down, that needs police involvement, they know how to help.

Anecdotal: I have had conversations with the two of the police in the area after the MadHacks hackathon about the hackathon security measures they had knew about for the hackathon that I had specifically requested to be put in place twice for both times I was on the MadHacks Organizer Team.

Run of Show Schedule

Checkin

Between which two times will your hackers arrive?
Are they phsically signing the wavier? or only agreeing to when they sign up for the Hackathon?
Do you need tables? How many? Where are you sourcing your tables from?
Is there a sponsorship showcase where sponsors sit and can converse with students as this is happening?
If there is not a showcase, where are you gonna situate the sponsors?
Is there team matching event happening where students that come alone are put into teams to hack for the hackathon?
How will you flow the people into the event? Will there be a table for signing the wavier? Will there be a table for the QR code scanning? Will there be a table to pick up nametags? Will there be a table for picking up t-shirts?
How do you make it clear to the hackers that team matching is happening?
How will you engage the hackers that are already at the event waiting for the opening ceremony to start?

Opening Ceremony

When will your opening cermony start and stop?
Will your opening ceremony end at midday 12 to start hacking?
What happens if your ceremony ends early?

Stall. Stand up if MadHacks is your first hackathon Stand up if you have been to a hackathon before. Stand up if you are freshman... Stand up if you are ready for MadHacks to start.
Day of: Have you met all the sponsors presenting in the first day?
Day of: Did you test the Mic?

Workshops / Help Sessions

What are the most useful workships for your event?

One year I decided to create a form to get a poll on which workshops people thought was useful for the event. We took the highest voted and ran with it.
Can you recruit other groups to do the workshops? Other student Orgs?
Are there technical workshops, where hackers learn something super technical?
Are there fun workshops, where hackers can take a break from hacking and have fun?
How can you use the room that you are in to better create a learning evironment and interact? Are there multiple projectors, Are there teams of tables? Is it a lecture hall?

Judging

How many Judges are you expecting?
How many teams are you expecting to have based on the participants entered?
Day of: Does the (amout of people admitted)/4 is part of the range that is expected?
What is the expected schedule for judging to happen?

The most successful judging logisitcs ran like this: Hackers have 10 minutes to setup while judges get their paper and look at the map to premap their walking path Hackers ready? Judges Ready? Judges walk into room and go to the repective teams. Each round judges get 1 min to walk and 4 minutes for each hacker. There should be enough judges so that this portion of judging lasts one hour. Map shown on the large projector in the main room. The entire judging process should be ideally one hour. Judges go back to the judging room to get the scores of the all the teams that they visited. Meanwhile hackers have nothing todo - a good idea is to share their project with another team if they are waiting as the sponsor tracks continue to go around and judge. From what the judges have ranked, top 5 teams and it should take about 15 min of time needed to calculate. Judges walk back into main room to watch the top 5 teams. As soon as 5 teams finish present, immidiatly go into superlatives and then company prize tracks. "We are now gonna annouce the superlative prizes, non sponsor track judges you can now back to the judging room to deliberate the top 3 places." You should just not have the judges discuss, just have them vote. Now judges are deliberating as superlatives and sponsor tracks are being decided.
From what the Judges decide it should take about 15 minutes for the calculations to happen. There is a chance that prizes finish earlier then the judges (please stall - There were this many hackers, this many projects submitted) Judges finish and walk into the main room and we annouce the top 3 tracks
What is the ideal length you want judging to be? What can be done to keep everything on track?
What is the method of calculation for the the projects being ranked?
What is the method of calculation when the top 5 present and judges are deciding?
Who is gonna rank the superlatives?
What is your plan if a company sponsor dips before the time they are supposed to judge projects?
How do you mitigate with judging bias?
How are you gonna make the judges happy?
How will you make sure each team gets atleast one judge.
Will the room be setup in a way where the judges get a dedicated walking path?
Exactly how many times to judges walk between the rooms?
How many prizes do we have? And what is the order we will announce the prizes?
Do you plan on
Will there be a meal prior to judging? Work with the meal person, what is the expected time for people to get their food?

The logistics of the meal and logisitcs of judgeing are correlated. As soon as the meal is finished, you can start judging.

Volinteers

How do you prevent a hacker from getting stuck?
Volinteers solve the problem of how does a hacker get help when they get stuck

We have tried help queues, discords help, but having volinteers genuinely interested in people's projects has been from my experience the best way for people to get help.
To be a volinteer, you should walk up to a team and ask about 4 questions:
Because the likelyhood that a hacker gets stuck is very high. One of the most common reasons hackers leave is because they are stuck on a problem.

How to approach a team: Volinteer: "Hey, how's it going" Hackers: "Good" Volinteer: "What is your idea?" Hackers: "Our idea is..." Volinteer: Woah I like that idea(say something positive about said idea). So i understand that your project does this(now try to repeat their idea back to them to help you understand- hackers should either say yes that's my idea or correct your understanding of the idea) Volinteers: what is the tech stack you are using? And you get a list of technology that they are using. From that deduce wheather they are running a website or application Choose one of the following questions to ask What are you currently now working on? Who is working on what? Do you have all a frontend, backend, and database? Do you have one api call from the database talking to the frontend using the backend? (If hackers say no, tell the hackers that you recommend that they should integrate early.) Does git work for you all? Think about what phase that group is in - are you still idea generating? What are some of the other ideas that were thrown out there? Does that idea solve a real world problem? What is the userbase of the idea? What do you have working? Where are you at? Or just give them general advice. Then I end it with "Do you have any questions for me while I am here?" "No" "Sounds good. Good luck." Rinse and repeat. Once you have gone by every team you can get your hands on, go revisit teams that you already visited. At this point, you become the point of contact for the hackers as if they do really get stuck, they will come to you for guidence. Annictodote: There is always one team every year who puts a git repo within another git repo and they come up to you like: We don't understand why we can't access this folder. The wonderful thing about being a volinteer, is that if you do not know the answer to the questions, ask another volinteer. The word about this team needing a specific kind of help will hopefully get around to someone that can help them.
So this info exists, but how are we gonna help the mentors understnad that this is their role? Will you print out sheets to give out to the mentors?
Will there be a volinteering meeting to facilitate this? Or will their be a person in charge that the volinteers need to find to give a rundown on how we want volinteers to act?
Should we have a sheet for the volinteers to fill out, how do you want to get the volinteers to do the work that is needed for the hackers?

Food - Main Meals

If you have retention rate numbers, from last year find them.
If you have exact number of meals we ordered from last year find them.
If both of the numbers are avaliable to you, compare these two numbers from last year. How many people did you actually retain during the hackathon and how many people did we expect to retain last year?

If you did the hackthon last year, please ask the person who ordered the meals for if they wrote down the info about it last year. The more accurate the numbers the more accurate the quanity of food need to get. Which is better for budgeting If you do not have a reference point, I would go for a 92% retention rate to be on the safer side. It's better to have extra food instead of not enough food but comes at a risk because you might end up spending way more than necessary on food. This is important because each meal has a different amount of people expected to eat. Near the beggining of the event for example if 300 students are planning to come, then we should get food for 320 if you include organizers for the first meal. Then as the second meal approaches some people might leave the hackathon and we should get food for 290 people including orgainizers.
Calculate the retention rate percentage for each meal.

For example: Meal 1 100%, Meal 2 91%, Meal three 79%...
Now that you know the numbers run from last year, the person who is making the budget can tell you the expected amount of people to show up at the event including walk-ins.
Take the retention rate multiply it by the expected total amount of people to calculate how many meals you need to order for each meal.
For the people with diatary restrictions, if you can find out what percentage we we ordered last year for vegan, veggie, and gluten free.
Create a document or write on the that shows a list of 2-3 places for each meal that you need to call for all the meals, write also in that document the expected meals needed for each meal and the respective phone numbers.
Now for each meal, call 2-3 places that you can source the food from and get quotes on the food.
Jot down the prices for respective meals and options for diatary restrictions.
In a meeting compare prices of food that you got from all the calls that you made. Also find out which ones need to pick up or which ones have delivary. Usually delivary is more expensive.
See where you can splurge and see where you can save.

Why do I highly recommend you call at minimum 2 places per meal? The reason is to look at avaliable options. If you only call one place you do not really know the price of food. They could be overcharging you and you might not even know. If you can get the cost per meal cheaper than the previuos year in a single call, then that works as well.
Once you have decided on certain places give the chosen places a call back and tell them you would like to place an order. If there is meat and veggie and gluten free, ask them if they can clearly label it and keep them seperated. And if at all possible get the food name and allergens of everything that is being ordered to be given to the person creating event signs.
Assuming you called multile places for each meal, which places have been decided for food?
Have you called those places or walked there in person?
How many meal count for each meal are you planning?
Does the meal count account for people leaving the hackathon midway through?
Have you accouted for people with diatry restrictions and allergins?
What is your plan for getting the food at the correct time based on the schedule?
Is there a time buffer, so that it the order is 100% complete by the time you arrive?
Is there a time buffer for the expected time to drive there and drive back (if applicable)?
Is there a time buffer for expected time of arrival of food, for setup before people start eating?
Giving 300+ students a meals takes more than an hour. How can you decrease this time of getting people through?

The speed of getting hackers food espically important if you are running the configuration where hackers submit, eat food, and then get judged. The longer it takes each hacker to get food, the more pushed back judging starts. The solution we have used in previous years it to have 2 lines for hackers to get food, and clearly label locations for ditary restrctions.
Keeping speed in mind, what is the configuration of the tables that will best suit the space?

Snacks and Drinks and other misc supplies

What snacks are you planning on having?
Planning on buying soda?
Enough plastic silverware for all the meals?
Pnough plates?
Enough bottled water?
Enough trash bags?
Enough paper towels?
Enough toilet paper?

Go for 2x the amount of expected attendees
Enough trash bags?
Do you have enough wipes? To wipe down messes?
Will we run out of toilet paper?

This is a Costco run usually. For snacks, we tend to look for the lowest cost per package and we get the amount to however many participants are gonna be at the event. The kinds of snacks go in the rule of one snack between every meal and two snacks overnight. So it the plan is Lunch > Dinner > Night > Breakfast > Lunch, then you should think about 4-5 different snack for. For example if 300 people are planned to come to the event, then 300 goldfish packets, 300 fruit snacks, 300 bags of individually wrapped chips. Then for the soda, this depends on how many sponsors are sponsoring with soda. Before going to Costco, write out a shopping list, and get that approved by the person writing the budget, even better, convince the budget person to come with There should be one person recording everything that is put in the cart for example some of the real numbers in MadHacks 2025:

1200 plates $89.95
1120 forks $12.79
360 rice crispy $77.22
324 chips $89.94
315 goldfish $90.93
...

Writing it down shows how many people you bought it for and it you can eaisly calculate how much total you spent (by adding the last column).

When is this Costco run gonna happen?

Usually happens the Wednesday or Thursday before the hackathon weekend
How many people need to help with the Costco run?

4-6 people is a sweet spot. Everytime we do one of these run, there is about 4 carts full of food. 4 people to push carts, one writing down all the quantitiy and prices.
Who has cars? Does someone have a minivan? How are you gonna trasport food to the hackathon?
Now where are you gonna store beteween costco and the hackathon?

Is there any carts that you can use to get it into the building.
Logisitcally how is that food gonna get to the location of the hackathon?

Closing Cermony

Need slides (usually the last minute details get updated day of)

Tech Team

Airtable

Student Sign up Form

This has basic info - Name, email, diatary restrictions, resueme (can fill out lator)...
Do you have the students agree to the terms and conditions of MadHacks?
This is the best time to ask if they have workshop prefrences.

Email Confermation

How many emails get sent to students, say a student filled out the hacker form.
Do they get an email conformation?
Did you test it to get an email confirmation?

One year we had really messed up numbers because people would sign up twice because we did not implement the email confiemration after signup.
What is the max amount of emails the google workspace can send out?

Different year we had issues because we sent out 1000 emails at the same time and our account got temperary blocked from sending emails. It got blocked write before we were trying to send hackers details to event emails and was blocked for multiple days.

Multiple rounds of submissions

NameTags

Have you used airtable to generate the qr codes and then imported it to adobe to genereate the nametags from a csv on the color printer?
Are you having issues with the color printer?

Have you put the file on a flash drive and then used the printer to configure the details of the setup? 8x11 sheet, thickist paper avaliable settings... and then hit print?
Is the nametag aligned with the back portion of the Name Tag?
Is this setup correctly to track retention rate of individuals?

QR System (Airtable)

Is the QR system setup? As in, there should be a green checkmark for a person that is qr-ing for scan.

If the qr system fails, use the scanners to write to a file and then hand the file to the person in charge of airtable.

Organizers attending forms

Do you have this made and is t-shirt size on this list?

Volinteer attending forms

Do you have a form created for volinteers coming to the event? Does it have expected shifts in the form?

Judges attending forms

Do you have a form created for judges attending the event?

Website Landing / Resource Page

If you already have a website, fork and clone and edit. If you don't have a website, create one.
Landing page must have the apply now button.
I have always kept suggesting we should put up resources that hackers can use at the hackathon.
Usually it's just minor adustments here and there to update it.

Presentation Slides

Opening Presentation Slides

Do you have the slides completed?
Does the slides have the order of the sponsors, schedule, rules of the hackathon, prize tracks, safety.

During the Event Slides

What should the screen say during the event and everyone's hacking?
Should it have the schedule?

Closing Ceremony Slides

Do you have a bare bones closing ceremony slides?

This is one of slides that get edited a ton on the day of Judging. Updateing who won every prize.

Photo Booth / Photo Backdrop

Day of: Do you have a photo booth or a backdrop that needs to get setup?
Can you set it up the day before the hacker checkin?

Marketing Team

Logo / Graphics / Banners

Do you need a new logo?
Do you need or have graphics for the T-shirt?
Do you need or have banners?
Does this work need to be done? Can you reuse from a previous year?

It's a new year are there anything graphics that need to be updated with the correct year?

Social Media Post Creation

Do you need or have social media posts that you can use leading up to, during, the event?

Recriting Volinteers/Mentors/Judges

Who do you want mentoring, judging and volinteering at the event? Are we only inviting people we all know?

Emailing Sponsors

Sponsor communication should happen through the marketing team
Once a sponsor decides to sponsor, emails need to go back and forth between.
To make the exchange of cash worth it, what parts of the sponsor packet do they want? Do they want to send mentors? send swag? are they sponsoring a prize track? are they running a workshop? will they want a table to call "home base" where they can put some of their stuff?

Discord

Is the discord for people who have attended the hackathon?
Link should get shown during the opening ceremony for people to join.

Event Signs

How to keep hackers in the event?
How to keep hackers from entering the organizer room, food room...
Is it clear that they are leaving the event when they cross certain thresholds?

Finance Team

Budget

What is budget goal?
Take a look at previous hackathons, accounting for inflation,

Cost per Hacker?

The person making the budget should decide how many hackers are attending.
Because they should be aware of how much money is left over from the previous hackathon.

Trasactions In and Out (Actuals)

This is a sheet that shows transactions as they happen in real time.

Prizes

Do you have four of first second and third place prizes?
This is one of the todos that can be done early. As long as the hackathon is for sure going to happen.

T-shirts

Do you have the graphic that goes on the t-shirt?
Have you ordered the graphic 3+ weeks before the hackathon?
This needs the graphics person to create a graphic that goes on the t-shirt and then it needs to get

Name Tags

Have you purchased the name tags? How many hackers are you letting in and depending on that how mnay should you buy?
Will you purchase AVE74459 Nametags?
Are you gonna buy it from Amazon or Office Supply?
Office supply has sometimes up to a 2 week shipping time, did you account for that?

Food Cost

Has every purchased food item run by the finance person?
Does the purchased food item fit within the budget and match the retention rate?
Can you work with the food person to figure this out?

Swag Bag

Do you want every hacker to get a swag bag to put all their stuff in?

Tables

Do you need tables? How many? Outsourceing to community? Will they get delivered?

Taxes

Are you planning to do taxes for the next year?

Uh for specifically MadHacks Hackathon. Contact me if you need any help. But it is 501c3n to IRS and there should be one for the state of Wisconsin.

These roles, attribution to me, is my long term contrabution to MadHacks.

🔍 Hackathon Roles Broken Down