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!

A slide with the words 'hack the hackathon', with images of all participants

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.

a group of hack the hackathon participants laughing.

Hack the hackathon is not just work, but also a lot of fun!

Welcoming participants to Hack the Hackathon 4

Welcome to HtH4!

Organizers welcoming in-person (and online) participants to Hack the Hackathon 4 in San Diego

A slide with an 8-bit animation of bees and shrubs, with the text 'Welcome to the Vibe Hive' on it

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.

A woman peeking out through a window of a red London bus

Have you come to steal my hack ideas?

Hacking at CERN's IdeaSquare, which includes an old red London bus to work in.

A group of hack the hackathon participants in the room, and on Zoom in the background

Hack the Hackathon 2

HtH2 was our first hybrid workshop, with the in-person workshop in New York at the Flatiron Institute.

A poster for Hack the Hackathon, showing a clothes iron with an egg taped to it, and a fork in front of it.

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.

A person taking a selfie with a Zoom screen filled with images of people.

Organiser selfie with the virtual participants

Two men standing next to a sign saying 'hack the hackathon', one holding a computer. They are in deep discussion.

Checking in

Project discussions can happen everywhere: over coffee, or standing right next to the entrance.

a row of laser cut wood coasters saying `hack the hackathon` on them, and the name of each participant

Hack the Hackathon Swag!

At HtH3, the local makerspace folks made us personalised coasters to remember the event

A woman standing in front of a screen showing a hack outcome

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.

A group of hack the hackathon participants sitting around tables in a meeting room.

Final stretch

Tired (but happy) faces at the end of Hack the Hackathon 2 in New York.

A slide with a chart with two axis. The horizontal axis is labelled 'structured' (left) to 'big picture' (right), the vertical axis 'solitary' (bottom) to 'outgoing' (top). There are cartoon figures of roleplaying characters in each quadrant.

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.

An image of a laptop screen showing a video of a room with people, as well as graphics with sensor data from sensors deployed in the room

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.

A group of Hack the Hackathon participants in the UN Libraries in Geneva. There's a huge, colourful painting in the background.

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.

Three Hack the Hackathon participants actively working on a hack related to stickers.

Hacking international development

Ongoing hacking at the UN Libraries.

A group of people in a huge hangar turned into a Makerspace, sitting around tables with laptops and listening to someone at the front give a presentation. In the back, there is a big red London bus that's part of the furniture.

Hacking @ CERN

At Hack the Hackathon 3, we spent a day at CERN's IdeaSquare to hack on better hackathon tools and methods.

a group of people in a meeting room focused on a person on Zoom during a discussion.

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.

A screenshot of a screen showing a slide with important conference information, as well as a video of the speaker and a video of the room with in-person participants

Hybrid Hacking

a good tech setup is key to making hybrid hackathons work

A slide with 3D printed sculptures of the hack the hackathon logo, and the title 'The Great Chocolate Smuggling Hack'

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.

A pile of tokens of various sizes and colours, with the outlines of animals printed on them

Facilitating team formation

Team formation at hackathons is hard! Here, a team is prototyping physical tokens to help teams find other participants.

Previous Next

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

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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

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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

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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 resources

Our 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

A laptop charger stuck into an adapter, which in turn sits in another adapter, which in turn is plugged into a socket.

An illustration of hands on a table filled with gears and instruments in various colours. In the middle it says 'hackathons for all'.

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 Community

Join 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 Event

Funders 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.