Hackathon
[1] Hackathons tend to have a specific focus, which can include the programming language used, the operating system, an application, an API, or the subject and the demographic group of the programmers.
In addition to creating functional software or hardware, hackathons can help participants develop skills like problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, team work, communication and time management.
Hackathons can also lead to formation of new companies, finding innovative solutions to real-world problems, or building a community around particular technology or cause.
Starting in the mid to late 2000s, hackathons became significantly more widespread and began to be increasingly viewed by companies and venture capitalists as a way to quickly develop new software technologies, and to locate new areas for innovation and funding.
To capture the great ideas and work-in-progress often people post a video of the demonstrations, blog about results with screenshots and details, share links and progress on social media, suggest a place for open source code and generally make it possible for people to share, learn from and possibly build from the ideas generated and initial work completed.
Mobile app hackathons like Over the Air, held at Phoenix Park, Ireland, can see a large amount of corporate sponsorship and interest.
[7][8] Music Hack Day, a hackathon for music-related software and hardware applications, is a popular event, having been held over 30 times around the world since 2009.
"TV Hackfest" events have been held in both London[16] and San Francisco,[17] focusing mainly on social television and second screen technologies.
The Open Bioinformatics Foundation ran two hackathons for its member projects in 2002 and 2003, and since 2010 has held 2-day "codefests" preceding its annual conference.
[20][21] BioHackathon[22] is an annual event that started in 2008 targeted at advancing standards to enable interoperable bioinformatics tools and Web services.
These are increasingly being used to deliver insights in big public and private datasets in various disciplines including business,[31] healthcare[32][33] news media[34] and for social causes.
In March 2020, numerous world-wide initiatives led by entrepreneurs and governmental representatives from European countries resulted in a series of anti-crisis hackathons Hack the Crisis, with first to happen in Estonia,[65] followed up by Poland,[66] Latvia, and Ukraine.
[67] A number of hackathons around the world have been planned in memory of computer programmer and internet activist Aaron Swartz, who died in 2013.
[73][74] The University of Mauritius Computer Club and Cyberstorm.mu organized a Hackathon dubbed "Code Wars" focused on implementing an IETF RFC in Lynx in 2017.
[75][76] ShamHacks at Missouri University of Science and Technology is held annually as an outreach activity of the campus's Curtis Laws Wilson Library.
ShamHacks 2018[77] focused on problem statements to better quality of life factors for US veterans, by pairing with veteran-owned company sponsors.
[79] Some hackathons (such as StartupBus, founded in 2010 in Australia) combine the competitive element with a road trip, to connect local tech communities in multiple cities along the bus routes.
A major part of the reserve towards hackathons has to do with the lack of viability and sustainability of solutions they develop,[82][83][84] as clearly shown by recent empirical research.
[87][88] Hackathons have been equally criticized for their failure to contemplate the complexity of issues that they seek to solve, developing technologies that do not address underlying societal and political causes of a problem.
A team at the September 2013 TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon presented the TitStare app, which allowed users to post and view pictures of men staring at women's cleavage.
[95] A November 2013 hackathon run by Salesforce.com, billed as having the largest-ever grand prize at $1 million, was accused of impropriety after it emerged that the winning entrants, a two-person startup called Upshot, had been developing the technology that they demoed for over a year and that one of the two was a former Salesforce employee.
