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How to attend a hackathon
- fabricode 14y agoNot sure about the rest of you, but I'm not clicking on a dickey.xxx link to read about anything.
- craigkerstiens 14y agoIts definitely a safe site, though can understand the issue with the url. You should send feedback on the domain to him directly on twitter @dickeyxxx
- michaelochurch 14y agoBlocked @work. Please choose a better name for your site (at least the TLD).
- dickeytk 14y agoTry http://dickeyxxx.com/hackathons http://dickeyxxx.com/hackathons
- robryan 14y agoIsn't it pointless for businesses to block .xxx? As porn sites know this will happen I doubt any of them rely on a .xxx
- teach 14y agoThis reasoning only makes since if most porn sites are trying to avoid being blocked. I can't imagine why this would be so.
- xoail 14y agoDon't ever get a domain with .xxx if you aren't going to create what it's meant for. Damn site is blocked at my work place.
- duaneb 14y agoHe may also intend to host pornographic material! Who knows.
- tomrod 14y agoThen don't host hackathons! :D
- bobocopy 14y agoActually, sounds like exactly the sort of hackathon I'd like to attend...
- mahyarm 14y agoSpend $10, put the normal stuff on the normal domain.
- dickeytk 14y agoit's way more fun this way
- moozoo 14y agoNo, it's really part of a vast conspiracy. After the content has been accidentally upvoted to the front page of HN, the OP will then make sure to only serve porn when your IT department goes back to verify whether or not the content was actually SFW.
- guelo 14y agoInteresting, .xxx could be a useful way to filter out corporate types, I'm wondering when that might be useful.
- marksands07 14y agoEvery one of these comments is about the xxx TDL. GG OP.
- adastra 14y agoHe lost me when he started talking about Startup Weekend. Some people may find that kind of thing fun, but sorry that's not a hackathon. I went to one a few weeks ago, and bailed when I realized business school students and hustlers out-numbered engineers 4 to 1. Entire teams of 7-8 people formed that didn't have a single technical person on them. I checked back with a friend afterwards, and apparently none of the top winning teams actually built anything -- they just presented business plans. Unless you want to work on a business plan for 48 hours, stay away...
- frankdenbow 14y agoDepends on the city and the makeup of the attendees but in NYC (where I organize them) we usually have an even split between devs and business (slightly fewer designers as well).
- mcrider 14y agoI had the exact same experience. I basically had to join up with 4 B-School students and work my ass off on their ideas which weren't interesting (and I couldn't play with anything technologically interesting since I didn't really have the time). By the end of saturday I realized I was burning myself out on something that I had no interest in and told them I quit (for fear of burning myself out for my actual job). It turns out they didn't even really need me because as you said, everyone presented business ideas with at most landing pages developed. I think SW might be more successful if the process isn't so ad-hoc on the first night.. maybe a web site that goes up the week before that lets people decide what they want to work on and start some initial planning. I'd also like to be sure I'm matched up with developers that I'd like to work with because the main reason I went there was to learn from other developers; Instead I was the only one on the team and felt like an unpaid laborer. Also, developers and designers should be better incentivized to attend by e.g. having much lower entrance fees than biz dev folks, and perhaps also by having separate prizes for best code/design.
- caseysoftware 14y agoI've attended a flock of Startup Weekends - Austin, DC, Houston - and was one of the organizers of the last one here in Austin. The mix of attendees & skill sets is both the hardest and most important thing. The approach we took was multi-faceted: - we announced it quietly to the tech groups first - mobile dev, rails, php, python, etc - with an embargo on tweeting it; - once we started spreading the word further, we made a very small number of non-technical/non-designer tickets available; - once those were sold out, we put the entire event into waitlist mode.. from then on, to buy a ticket, you had to send us a Linked In profile to prove your background. And once we opened it back up to business people, we wanted to get the most motivated, so we asked everyone on the list to make a 1 minute video pitch on why they should get a ticket.. and then tweet it to us with the event hashtag. Most didn't bother making a video, so the decision was simple. The result was a good mix of people and the non-technical people were very motivated and (probably) felt lucky to be there. My 0.02.
- benatkin 14y agoThat's a great point about having a winner not being all it's cracked up to be. Having to show something is enough motivation for me. Also sponsors often take away as much from hackathons as they put into them. I'd love an API hack day where all API's including open protocols were on equal footing. At the API Hack Day I went to there were actually prizes for using the sponsors' APIs.
- eurodance 14y agoYeah, I'm not going to an XXX domain at work. The idea is terrible and not worth whatever benefit was in mind.
- speek 14y agoAwesome. Dickey + I built weft.io for the last Angelhack (a couple weeks ago). We didn't win, but we definitely did a lot of things we were proud of.