Hackathons don’t win you customers

This content originally appeared on Modern Web Development with Chrome and was authored by Paul Kinlan

<p>Oddly I rarely talk about Developer Relations, but I feel like changing that today.</p> <p>I feel really uncomfortable when I hear people suggest Hackathons are a part of building a sustainable, scalable developer ecosystem.</p> <p><strong>They are not.</strong></p> <p>I have run hackathons. Some better than others. I have learnt a lot about them.</p> <p>Businesses and Platform creators:</p> <ul> <li>If you are thinking of running a hackathon to win potential new customers <strong>you are doing it wrong</strong>.</li> <li>If you are wanting someone to start a business by using your platform at your hackathon <strong>you are doing it wrong</strong>.</li> <li>If you are running hackathons to raise brand awareness <strong>you are doing it wrong</strong>.</li> <li>If you are offering winners $SOMERANDOMLARGENUMBER <strong>you are doing it wrong</strong>.</li> <li>If your product team (PMs through to Eng) are not at the hackathon <strong>you are doing it wrong</strong>.</li> </ul> <p>Hackathons can be a thing of beauty, they can produce completely unexpected demos, but that is not your goal. You should be using it as a learning exercise for <strong>you</strong>, <strong>your team</strong> and <strong>fixing your product</strong>. It is the developer version of a beta test, not a marketing tool.</p> <p>Learn from the developers using your platform. Ask yourselves the following questions:</p> <ul> <li>Do your demos work? are developers using the demos to build on top of them?</li> <li>Does your documentation work? can developers start by diving into the docs and following the guides step by step?</li> <li>Does your platform work? Is your API intuitive? Are developers getting stuck on certain parts?</li> <li>Is there value to your platform? Is it possible for people to build sustainable integrations on your platform?</li> </ul> <p>You can answer all these questions at a Hackathon. That is what you should be concentrating on.</p> <p>One little point, rather than just rewarding teams who produce a lot, reward filing bugs and issues on all parts of your product, the apis, the documentation, the demos and the value as well.</p>

This content originally appeared on Modern Web Development with Chrome and was authored by Paul Kinlan