Hackathons

Throughout the course, our students may have the opportunity to work on Hackathons organised by CodeYourFuture or partner organisations.

Goals

The goals of the Hackathon are as follows in priority order

1. The trainees have the chance to put their learning into practice in a low risk environment

2. The trainees get experience working in a team

3. The trainees get to meet experienced developers (if pairing with external developers)

4. The teams produce some useful that will be used

Steps Required Running a Hackathon

More details about these steps can be found below

1. Sign off from Programme Managers & Education Team to run a Hackathon

2. All Stakeholders must decide when the Hackathon will run

3. Dicuss with Education Team about the technologies that the participants will be encouraged to use

4. Decide on the Challenges that will be set

5. Find and onboard Volunteers

6. Select and onboard Trainees

Prerequisite

Before a Hackathon can happen sign-off must be given from

• Local Programme Manager(s)

• Local Education Team

In addition to this, the depending on when during the course takes place the Education Team must be consonsulted on

• When the Hackathon runs

  • To make sure it doesn't clash with any other events

• What technologies the particpants will be using

  • To make sure that the hackathon compliments trainees learning rather than being in conflict

Trainee Constraints

If a Hackathon is taking place during the duration of a class (i.e. before Graduation) then there are some constraints on the trainees

1. Coursework Comes First

   • Above all else, the trainees must prioritise their coursework before doing any work on the hackathon.

   • For some trainees this can be up to twenty hours of work a week

2. Only Fully Up To Date Trainees

   • The trainee must have no outstanding coursework

3. Only Part Time Paid Working or Less

   • Some of our trainees work in paid jobs. We ask that they don't partake in any hackathons if they are already working more than twenty hours a week of paid work.

If the Hackathon happens outside of a scheduled course you should also be thoughtful of

• Time constraints because of work

  • Many of our trainees will be working part or full time

• Family constraints

  • Many of our students look after children or relatives

Hackathon Volunteers

As a volunteer on a Hackathon you have several aims over the project

1. Teach our students about how a hackathon works

   • Our trainees will never have take part in a hackathon

2. Guide our trainees on working on quick turnover projects

   • This could mean guiding them towards an MVP over a larger project

3. Create a valuable product for us

   • With your outside perspective we'd love to see some of your solutions to the problems we face

4. Have fun!

   • Most of all, we want to make sure you have a great time working with our trainees. They're eager to learn and always excited to meet developers like you.

Challenges

Our Hackthons will either be based around a project idea or a general theme.

For example we may have a business problem such as

We need a website that allows us to track attendance through the course. It must be able to register students who attend on time, late and who do not attend. It must be able to accessed only be verified volunteers.

In the above example we have a specific tool in mind that we know we need built in order to do what we do better.

Alternatively, we might have a problem that we need a creative solution for. For example

Our trainee often have trouble managing their time and submitted homework before each lesson.

For more general problems like this we're looking to your creativity to help us solve the problems in ways we haven't thought of yet.

Previous Hackathon

Here are some example hackathon that we've run with partners in the past

• Capgemini Hackathon - West Midlands - November 2020