The NESCent hackathon model is a style of hackathon developed and refined over a period of 10 years, with primary sponsorship of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent).
Hackathons come in many shapes and sizes. If your organization is thinking about sponsoring a hackathon, you may be considering what kind of hackathon to run, how much it will cost, how to organize it, and what kind of outcomes can be expected.
We can't tell you which kind to choose, because we only really know about one kind: the NESCent hackathon model. This style of hackathon, which typically lasts 5 days and involves about 30 people, was designed to serve a relatively small and widely dispersed academic discipline (evolutionary biology) facing challenges of interoperability, backed by a sponsor (NESCent) dedicated to nurturing a community of practice committed to open software development. Participants gather on day 1 to discuss challenges and opportunities. By the end of the day, they have assembled into a small set of teams, each committed to a creative, collaborative project of its own design. On the remaining days, each team works to produce tangible outcomes.
We provide a detailed guide to the process of organizing and staging a NESCent hackathon, which takes several months. The budget is predominantly for travel and lodging for the participants (plus administrative support), which depends heavily on the extent to which participants are recruited locally.
NESCent hackathons have intangible outcomes like building a shared awareness of challenges and opportunities within a community, and drawing attention to a sponsor's resources, as well as tangible outcomes such as source code, documentation, and installations. All teams produce tangible outcomes. The typical team project ends when the hackathon ends, but frequently individuals or teams continue to work after the event to produce downstream outcomes, including software improvements, presentations, proposals for funding, and manuscripts for publication.
To find out if the NESCent model is right for you, consider the following:
As a hackathon organizers (or prospective organizer), you may want to know how to show potential sponsors that hackathons are valuable, and you may be considering how to organize an event that is successful in advancing the sponsor's aims. The NESCent hackathon manuscript (see the links below) explains the kinds of outcomes and impacts that can be expected from a NESCent hackathon. We also provide a detailed guide to the process of organizing and staging a NESCent hackathon, a process that takes several months.
This repository stores material developed for a project that aims to
This is the main repository for our work. We also have a private repository of data, most of which will be released upon IRB approval. We welcome comments and suggestions from anyone interested.