How to organize a hackathon: a step-by-step guide.

Fill in the sheet as you read: it becomes the event summary you take for approval. To convince leadership, pair it with the business case.

Goal:                  [one sentence], measured by [number]
Format and length:     [in person / online / hybrid / internal], [hours or weeks], [dates]
Who takes part:        [employees / students of (university) / open], [places]
Expected submissions:  [number], sign-ups to accept: [number]
Problem owner:         [name and role]
Prize:                 [prize], recognition for those who don't win: [what]
Jury:                  [number] people, who decides next steps: [name]
Follow-up owner:       [name], decision by [date]

Write the goal in one sentence before anything else. Every later choice depends on it.

• Get ideas on a real problem: the brief must be specific, and someone in the company must be ready to take the best proposal forward.
• Meet people to hire: the deliverable must show how each person works, not only what the team produced.
• Engage employees: participation across departments matters more than technical quality.
• Make your brand known to students: the relationship with the university and the quality of the experience matter most.

A hackathon with three goals at once usually misses all three. Also pick the number you will measure the goal by, for example proposals that still have an owner after 30 days.

Before the brief, bring two roles into the working group:

• The problem owner: the person who lives with the problem every day. They review the brief, pick the data and, if possible, sit on the jury.
• Legal and privacy: whoever covers project ownership, personal data and prizes. Prize rules differ by country; in Italy, for example, a prize may fall under the rules on prize contests (DPR 430/2001). Check with an adviser.

Also decide whether the event is open to anyone or invite-only. An open hackathon needs more promotion; an invite-only event, or one reserved for a university's students, is easier to run. For online events, read the online hackathon guide.

No all-nighters. An event that runs through the night measures how long teams can stay awake more than the quality of their work. Close submissions during the day and put the end time of each day in the agenda.

The brief is the first document teams read. A vague brief produces vague submissions. A good brief contains:

1. The situation: who the company or organization is and what is happening, with numbers if you have them.
2. The problem: one precise question. "How do we get people under 25 buying our product again with a budget under €10,000?" works better than "Ideas for young people".
3. The constraints: budget, time, technology, what cannot change.
4. The materials: data, documents and access the teams can use.
5. The deliverable: what teams hand in, in which format, with which limit (for example a 10-slide deck and a prototype).

A complete brief takes time to write. With MARA you start from a few lines about the problem, and MARA AI writes the brief, rules, criteria, deliverables and timeline in minutes. Then you edit everything.

The rules answer the questions participants will ask anyway:

• who can sign up;
• how many people per team;
• what they may use (existing code, AI tools, outside data);
• what happens with late submissions;
• who owns what gets produced.

The rules template covers them all, including the AI rule.

Fix the criteria in advance and share them with everyone. Three to five are enough. Example for a business hackathon:

Give every judge the same scoring sheet and ask for a short comment with each score. Teams remember the events where they understood why they won or lost. More rubrics are in the judging criteria guide.

• Employees: an internal announcement, support from managers, work time set aside.
• Students: career services, faculty and student associations. An agreement with a university brings sign-ups that a campaign alone does not reach. On MARA you can also publish the challenge to the MARA student community, which is growing with partner universities.
• Open public: industry communities, meetups, social media. Some people who sign up will not show up (section 7).

Decide how teams form: sign up as a team, teams forming freely at the start, or teams assigned by you. In that case, mix profiles. For channels and timing, read how to promote a hackathon.

Start from the number of submissions you want and work back to sign-ups.

• Attendance. Not everyone who signs up for a free event shows up. Use the attendance rate from your last edition, or from a similar event at your company or university. At your first edition, measure it.
• Submissions. Use the share of sign-ups who submitted at your last edition. At your first edition, measure it.

registrations to accept = places ÷ share who show up
sign-ups needed = submissions wanted ÷ share who submit

Example, with values to replace with your own: a 60-seat room; if two sign-ups in three showed up last year, you can accept up to 90 registrations. Online, if one sign-up in three submitted last year and you want 30 individual submissions, you need at least 90 sign-ups.

An internal event, or one with a partner university, can see different attendance from an open event: keep separate rates for each type of event.

Three to seven judges, with at least one person who can decide what happens to the winning proposal. Confirm the judges before sign-ups open and send them the brief and criteria before the event.

The prize does not have to be money. An internship, an interview with the team, a day at the company or a budget to develop the idea all work well. Put it in the rules from day one.

Mentors answer teams' questions during the event. Two or three people who know the problem, with clear shifts, are enough. Confirm them at least three weeks before the event.

The cost lines are always the same; the amounts change:

• Venue and logistics: room, connection, food, materials. Zero if online.
• Prizes: money, internships, experiences.
• Promotion: team time, any paid ads.
• Tools: a platform for the brief, sign-ups, submissions and judging. MARA starts at €67 a month with free drafts; agencies work on quotes.
• People's time: whoever writes the brief, runs the event, judges and mentors. This is the line most often underestimated.

For a comparison of platforms, agencies and DIY, read Platform, agency or DIY: comparison.

The value of the event shows afterwards, but you prepare it beforehand. State on the event page whether projects are for learning, for testing an idea or for going into the product. That way teams know before they start.

At the awards, name an owner for every proposal that moves forward and announce the date to decide whether to proceed, revise or stop. Put that date in the calendar right away.

Within a week:

1. Send each team feedback based on the criteria.
2. Give everyone who submitted proof of participation. On MARA, everyone who submits gets a verifiable certificate they can add to LinkedIn (for participants: hackathons on your CV).
3. If the goal was hiring, contact the people you want to meet.

Within three weeks, publish a recap page with numbers, teams and outcomes. Show submissions only with the teams' consent.

The rest is in the after the hackathon guide.