[Paper Review] The 2nd Workshop on Hacking and Making at Time-Bounded Events

Ei Pa Pa Pe‐Than, Alexander Nolte|arXiv (Cornell University)|Jan 3, 2019

Biomedical and Engineering Education10 references4 citations

TL;DR

This paper presents findings from the 2nd Workshop on Hacking and Making at Time-Bounded Events, which brought together researchers, organizers, and practitioners to examine hackathons and similar events as socio-technical systems. It identifies key challenges and opportunities in designing time-bound collaborative events across diverse domains, emphasizing their role in fostering innovation, skill development, and community building through structured, short-term collaboration.

ABSTRACT

In hackathons, small teams work together over a specified period of time to complete a project of interest. Such time-bounded hackathon-style events have become increasingly popular across different domains in recent years. Collegiate hackathons, just one of the many variants of hackathons, that are supported by the largest hackathon league (https://mlh.io/) alone attract over 65,000 participants among more than 200 events each year. Variously known as data dives, codefests, hack-days, sprints, edit-a-thons, mapathons, and so on, such events vary depending on different audiences and with divergent aims: for example, whether teams know each other beforehand, whether the event is structured as a competition with prizes, whether the event is open or requires membership or invitations, and whether the desired outcome is primarily a product innovation, learning a new skill, forming a community around a cause, solving a technical problem that requires intensive focus by a group, or just having fun. Taken together, hackathons offer new opportunities and challenges for collaboration by affording explicit, predictable, time-bounded spaces for collaborative work and engaging with new audiences. With the goal of discussing opportunities and challenges surrounding hackathons of different kinds, this one-day workshop brought together researchers, experienced event organizers, and practitioners to share and discuss their practical experiences. Empirical insights from studying these events may help position the CHI community to better study, plan and design hackathon-style events as socio-technical systems that support new modes of production and collaboration.

Motivation & Objective

• To examine the diverse forms and purposes of time-bounded collaborative events such as hackathons, codefests, and edit-a-thons.
• To identify common challenges and opportunities in organizing and participating in hackathon-style events across different domains.
• To understand how these events function as socio-technical systems supporting new modes of collaboration and production.
• To support the CHI community in better studying, planning, and designing such events through empirical insights.
• To bridge research, practice, and event organization by sharing real-world experiences and lessons learned.

Proposed method

• Organized a one-day interdisciplinary workshop bringing together researchers, event organizers, and practitioners.
• Collected and synthesized practical experiences from diverse hackathon variants across education, technology, and civic engagement.
• Analyzed event structures including duration, team composition, competition vs. non-competitive formats, and participation criteria.
• Explored the role of time constraints as a design feature enabling focused, high-intensity collaboration.
• Mapped event types to their intended outcomes—e.g., product innovation, skill acquisition, community formation, or problem solving.
• Used qualitative synthesis to identify recurring themes in event design, participant motivation, and organizational challenges.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 What are the key structural and motivational differences across various types of time-bounded collaborative events?
• RQ2 How do time constraints shape collaboration, creativity, and outcomes in hackathon-style events?
• RQ3 What challenges do organizers face in designing events that serve diverse goals such as innovation, learning, or community building?
• RQ4 In what ways can hackathons be effectively studied and designed as socio-technical systems?
• RQ5 How can empirical insights from real-world events inform future research and practice in collaborative innovation?

Key findings

• Hackathons and similar events vary widely in format, from competitive coding marathons to collaborative edit-a-thons and mapathons.
• Over 65,000 participants attend collegiate hackathons annually through a single major league, indicating significant scale and reach.
• Events serve multiple purposes: product innovation, skill development, community formation, problem solving, and enjoyment.
• Time-bounded structures create predictable, focused environments that support intense collaboration and rapid prototyping.
• Successful events often depend on clear goals, defined roles, and intentional design to balance competition with collaboration.
• Empirical insights from these events can inform the design of future socio-technical systems that support new modes of collective production.