Host a Food Waste Hackathon
If you are just starting to plan a Food Waste Hackathon, first read the part about Organizing a Food Waste Hackathon. If your event is all set up, you have your participants, location and all other logistics, than you can find here some checklists, tips and structure for hosting the Food Waste Hackathon, like how to help the team building process and encourage brainstorming and what we found most important when organizing a Food Waste Hackathon.
Flipcharts, paper and what else you need
Even if a Hackathon has a technical focus and you can expect the participants will bring some laptops (don't forget to remind them shortly before the event), it is good to have plenty of paper, pencils, markers, etc, so that you can document and facilitate creative processes and improve teamwork. Find here our checklist, what to bring when heading out for the big day.
| food_waste_hackathon_equipment_checklist.pdf |
Let participants know what to expect (Agenda)
When hosting a Food Waste Hackathon you are managing a lot of expectations. Most people have never participated at a Hackathon and even if they have, it was probably a Hackathon with the focus of solving technical problems and not social problems. To avoid disappointment and confusion, be clear up front. No one reads page long descriptions of things, so it is better to split up information on all your channels (on the website, on Facebook, in the registration process) and also take some time in the beginning of the event to set the stage for the Food Waste Hackathon, by explaining the rules, the procedure and what a Food Waste Hackathon is. Nailing it down to the agenda helps break it down. To make it easier for the participants to know where they are at you can:
- hand out an agenda to everyone or to every group table
- put it on the wall
- tell them where to find it online
Here you can download the presentation we used:
| food_hack_praha_presentation.pdf |
Present the jury and the challenges
Having experts present their challenges and real life scenarios of dealing with food waste, makes the event so much more interesting and also sets a good base for the ideation phase. It is not necessary to make the jury come twice to your event, unless they like to, but present the criterias on which the results will be judged at the very beginning. For some of the 5 STREFOWA Food Waste Hackathons we made this first part open for everyone to come. It was interesting for people, who couldn't or didn't want to join for the entire Food Waste Hackathon to learn more about food waste and network with people interested in solving food waste. There are pros and cons to both inviting or not inviting external people to join part of the Food Waste Hackathon.
Help the ideas flow
We tried out different ways to facilitate the ideation phase. All together in a group with one moderator, that took notes and grouped the ideas as they popped up. Another method we did, was to put challenges on paper on dedicated tables and asked the participants to go around and put their ideas to each challenge. It is also possible to divide the groups earlier and then limit the brainstorming on the challenge, that the group has decided on. We prefer the idea to get input from all participants to all ideas and to not do it publically (all in one group) as some people might be shy to participate or some people judge ideas from others. This way you get most ideas and can ask the groups to group the ideas in smaller teams.
Teambuilding is important and can be hard
You never know what expectations people have and how comfortable they are to group with people they don't know. Some are very passionate about an idea, others care more about the social aspects, which group they join. In the beginning we hoped for an ideal ratio of people with different professions. Depending on the size of your event and the possibilities to structure participants in that way (if you are a teacher you know the particiaptns better and can influence the group building), but for us we realized we cannot control the group building as much. We tried different group building methods and liked the most the method to put the challenges on paper on separate tables, than after the ideation phase asked participants to stay with the challenge they want to work on and then asked people to move to different tables if the group sizes were uneven. If one challenge has a lot of people interested, sometimes 2 groups emerged. It happened that a challenge didn't get pick. That is ok too.
Provide input and guidance
In organizing we found that people enjoy little breaks of the teamwork in form of little input talks. So we held different input talks on Teambuilding, structure of the idea, marketing and engaging and also pitching. You can download our presentations here, that you can also use when hosting a Food Waste Hackathon, but we recommend using the potential and competences of your team and create similar input talks. What will make your app successful is a modified Business Canvas, that we printed out in A3 for each team, as it helps structure a viable idea.
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Presentations
Set a clear way how and when presentations of the work of the teams are handed over to the organizing team. Calculate enough time for some technical problems. When you have all the presentations, check them before if they work to avoid problems during the presentations. Be strict about the timeline and communicate it a few times during the Food Waste Hackathon, that it is good to practice the talk a few times to make sure they have enough time to finish.
Depending on how many teams are presenting, teams can be given 3-5 Minutes to present their work. If we had enough time we gave another few minutes for questions from the jury. Sure, more would be nice, but consider the jury and the audience is sitting for hours if every team takes 15 minutes. To make it easier for the presenters to stay in time, it is good to raise warnings (just a A4 paper works fine) how many minutes are left. To end the presentation a timer can be useful to interrupt the presentation. To keep it fair, after the timer went off, only the sentence can be finished.
Depending on how many teams are presenting, teams can be given 3-5 Minutes to present their work. If we had enough time we gave another few minutes for questions from the jury. Sure, more would be nice, but consider the jury and the audience is sitting for hours if every team takes 15 minutes. To make it easier for the presenters to stay in time, it is good to raise warnings (just a A4 paper works fine) how many minutes are left. To end the presentation a timer can be useful to interrupt the presentation. To keep it fair, after the timer went off, only the sentence can be finished.
Being prepared for the jury
The jury is arriving at the moment, when things are busy with handing over presentations and participants are all nervous about their presentation. Dedicate one person from your team, to welcome and guide the jury members. Give them a short summary of the Food Waste Hackathon so far, show them where they will sit. To take notes we prepared for the jury a document with the criterias plus subquestions. If you want you can use this as well:
| jury_information_food_waste_hackathon.pdf |
Celebrate!
As a thank you for participant's time donation for a good cause, it is great to provide prizes, ideally from fitting sponsors, but also hand over a nice certificate for the participation. Here you can see how we designed the STREFOWA Certificates.
| certificate.pdf |
Thank the jury for their time, hard work deciding and possible the prizes they brought along. A thank you, could be also a certificate, a nice bottle of wine or other cool gifts. To not forget to thank everyone, when emotions run high, it might be useful to have some slides prepared that mention all supporters and sponsors of the event.
Even if it was a long day, people usually enjoy staying a little bit longer for some party time with snacks, drinks and maybe even music.
Even if it was a long day, people usually enjoy staying a little bit longer for some party time with snacks, drinks and maybe even music.
Ask how people liked the Food Waste Hackathon
Right after everyone received prizes and goodie bags is a great time to ask people for feedback. Just kidding, but it is true. Whatever timing you choose, during the celebration participants might also not be in the mood to "work" anymore, it is a good idea to ask participants for feedback if you plan to host another Food Waste Hackathon or also want to give feedback to the sponsors and cooperation partners. Here you find the questionnaire we used:
| questionnaire_food_waste_hackathons.pdf |
Write a summary of the Food Waste Hackathon
Taking the time to write an interesting summary of the Food Waste Hackathon makes the event live on. Make sure to take some pictures during the event and share the experience with the people that couln't make it or didn't find out about the Food Waste Hackathon in time. For the STREFOWA Food Waste Hackathons we transformed the registration page into a summary of the Food Waste Hackathon.
