[SGVLUG] Student Hackathon advice

[Junaid A.]

Hi Lan,

Thanks for all those resources and great questions. 

All I know is that it is a 12 hour event at a religious organization with lots of space to work on (Various rooms can be used by each time to work on their project). I'm handling the entire Tech side by myself, I could use help. There are 75 participants and with teams of about 8 people so possibly 9 teams. They will work on building apps or websites. 

There is food and snacks (free) throughout the day. 

The students want to build stuff that can help a good cause. I advised them to download stuff ahead of time on Flash drives so lower bandwidth during the event. 

There seems to be rules but I am not aware of them. Projects will be judged at the end of the day. The event is this Sunday from 10 am-10 pm

I do not have enough supplies but will ask the Hackathon folks to buy some of their own cables, power surges etc. They are also willing to buy wired switches to avoid using the wireless network completely. However, they have a limited budget and will work with donations or loaners.

There are NO mentors and no one with any past hackathon experience. This is the first hackathon put together by these students organizations representing the entire west coast. 

There will be some breaks.

If anyone is willing to to give more advice or even com eout, let me know. The event is in Rowland Heights, CA.

Thanks again.

Junaid 

-----Original Message-----
From: Lan Dang [mailto:l.dang at ymail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2016 8:14 PM
To: SGVLUG Discussion List. <sgvlug at sgvlug.net>; Junaid A. <junaidjan at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [SGVLUG] Student Hackathon advice

This seems like a good guide, even though I hate this style of web page.
http://www.explara.com/blog/hackathon-101-your-basic-guide/


For the NASA Space Apps Challenge, they were using hackpad.com. 
https://hackpad.com/NASA-uses-Hackpad-to-organize-its-biggest-hackathon-ever-Ue2bBvmBN3S


I have limited experience with hackathons, but I know what is important to me.
Is there a detailed schedule?  Will there be presentations?  Will there be a chance to network?  When can you start to hack?  When do projects have to be presented?


How are teams formed?  Any limits on number of people?

Are the rules well-defined?

Do the participants know what they should bring and/or prepare?
Is the organizer providing any additional resources or tools?


If you recommend wired connections, are you providing the Ethernet cables?


Is there anything that people should download ahead of time, in case they are unable to get on the Internet?

Are there enough power outlets?


Will there be snacks/drinks/meals?

Are there scheduled breaks?

Are there mentors to answer questions and keep the teams moving?



Hope that helps.

Lan

________________________________
From: Mic Chow <zen at netten.net>
To: Junaid A. <junaidjan at yahoo.com>; SGVLUG Discussion List. <sgvlug at sgvlug.net> 
Sent: Tuesday, May 3, 2016 7:34 PM
Subject: Re: [SGVLUG] Student Hackathon advice



If it is that event at Hackaday that I was at as well Michael, technically it was the router's DHCP server that got confused.  I suspect that either that function got overloaded and stopped working or that it ran out of free IPs to assign.  However, Michael is correct simple google searches will not take near as much bandwidth, but videos and people camping out on Facebook, Youtube, etc. will easily eat up all the bandwidth. 

-Mic



On 05/03/2016 12:31 PM, Junaid A. via SGVLUG wrote:

Thanks Michael.
 
They are all local. Some will use WiFi but I am recommending most of them to use wired connections. The total bandwidth at the location is a dedicated 10 Mbps .
 
Is there a good discussion board or website that can serve as a guide for a student group like this to have a successful first Hackathon? I told them about the SGVLUG and Scale etc. however, only a few students attended SCALE this year.
 
Any input would be useful since I will be the only onsite technical support.
 
Junaid
 
From:M Starch [mailto:mdstarch at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2016 11:32 AM
To: Junaid A. <junaidjan at yahoo.com>; SGVLUG Discussion List. <sgvlug at sgvlug.net>
Subject: Re: [SGVLUG] Student Hackathon advice
 
Are they remote, or local? Is their work remote or local? Googling for example takes less bandwidth than video conferencing or data movement tasks.
Another thing to note: commodity wifi routers tend to start dropping connections at that scale.  If you will have them all use WiFi, make sure your router can handle the load.  At an event at the Hackaday space, their router stopped serving internet with a comparable number of people and thus no one could access the internet.
Good Luck,
Michael
On May 3, 2016 10:21 AM, "Junaid A. via SGVLUG" <sgvlug at sgvlug.net> wrote:
I am helping a student group from universities across the West Coast, with a Hackathon this Sunday.
> 
>Any advice on how much bandwidth is typically required for a 75 user hackathon?
> 
>Thanks
> 
>Junaid Aasi