Hackathon case study: H-ACK Robots in Action by H-FARM.

H-FARM is based in Roncade, Italy. MARA was born there: its four founders are former H-FARM College master's students. H-ACK was an H-FARM hackathon on the theme "Robots in Action", with YouTuber Jakidale as a guest.

For MARA, H-ACK was the first public test: running a real hackathon entirely on the platform. Teams, materials and submissions had to sit in one place, not spread across chats, shared folders and separate forms. The H-FARM College article describes it as MARA's first test in the field.

• A 24-hour hackathon on robotics and AI, on 11 and 12 April 2026, according to H-FARM's news page.
• Team-based: 157 people in 30 teams.
• A jury of 6 judges for the final projects.
• One platform for the whole event: MARA.

According to the source, participants did three things on the platform:

1. collaborated with their team;
2. organized their work in the workspace;
3. submitted their final projects in one place.

The 6 judges evaluated the projects: MARA does not score them and does not suggest who should win. Every challenge on MARA also has announcements, Q&A, a participant list with statuses the organizer sets, and export to Excel or ZIP. The source does not say which of these H-FARM used.

• 157 participants
• 30 teams
• 6 judges
• 24 hours of hackathon, on 11 and 12 April 2026
• 1 platform for the whole event

• H-FARM College, "Beyond the CV: MARA, the platform born from the challenges of H-FARM College": English version, Italian version. It reports the participants, teams, judges and the work done inside MARA.
• H-FARM, "H-ACK Robots in Action con Jakidale" (news of 12 April 2026, in Italian): event name, dates (11-12 April 2026), format (a 24-hour hackathon on robotics and AI) and prize (a day with Jakidale).

With more than 150 people, the organizer's workload grows in three areas: communication, submissions and evaluation. It helps to manage them in one place.

• Communication. Announcements and team questions sit in the same challenge, visible to everyone, so you stop answering the same question ten times in private messages.
• Submissions. Every team uploads its project to the same place. At the end, judges find everything ready and you can export the material.
• Evaluation. With 6 judges and 30 teams, the judges' assessments are comparable when the criteria are fixed in advance and the same for everyone.

This case does not promise that every hackathon will go the same way. It shows that an event of this size ran in full on MARA, with the numbers above.

You can start from the problem you want solved. MARA AI asks a few questions, proposes two directions and writes the story, brief, rules, evaluation criteria, deliverables and timeline. Nothing goes live until you approve it. At the end, everyone who submits gets a verifiable certificate and a portfolio of the work they did, winners or not. Drafts are free, and you pay the subscription only while a challenge is live: Launch costs €67 a month for 1 live challenge, Growth €109 a month for 3 live challenges at once, VAT excluded.

To get started, read the guide on how to organize a hackathon or the page on hackathons on MARA. For an employees-only event, see the internal hackathon page. Back to the home page.