ypes of hackathons and reasons to conduct them often
What is a Hackathon? Well, it is a kind of a competitive event where the team of developers, designers, and other experts of a particular company mainly collaborates to create certain solutions for some specific problems. But finding the solutions have to be done within a proper and given time frame.

Major companies mainly conduct hackathon events because here, the goal is to create working prototype in the form of an app or a website so that a given problem can be solved easily. So, the benefit of conducting a hackathon is also to give an opportunity to the employees and the participants not only to increase their network but also to collaborate and produce some new ideas.

The best part for the participants to take part in a hackathon is that, they get a proper platform to explore some new technologies and then work on a certain project that they are really passionate about. They can also build up a totally new concept in a very short span of time. Hackathons these days are not only restricted to the developer community but it has expanded to giving an opportunity to create or build a new product by participating in a hackathon.

Why companies or organisations conduct hackathons?

ypes of hackathons and reasons to conduct them often 2
Well, there are many reasons why a company does and should conduct a hackathon.

  • Organisations mostly conduct hackathon because they can encourage the people participating there to create some new solutions for problems. Not only that, it also builds some brand awareness and also drive innovation. There are many companies that go for internal hackathons because it is a place where they can easily engage their employees and then promote some collaborative work environment. Conducting an external hackathon can also help the companies to recruit some new talented professionals in a much lesser cost than going for regular and traditional recruiting methods.
  • Conducting an external hackathon means the company does not have to go through the tiring and long rounds of interviews and instead of that, they can easily assess the potential candidates from the applicants who are taking part in the hackathon and see whether they suit their company or not.
  • This is a digital era and so the success of a business totally depends on their ability to sustain in the market. Again, the secret behind sustaining successfully in the market is the new innovations. This can meet the growing customers’ expectation and beat the other companies in the running competition. So, the companies need to keep innovating new services and products and conducting a hackathon gives the drive to create something new.
  • The biggest benefit of conducting a hackathon (as mentioned above) is that, it can offer a structure that can scale up the new innovations process. This also gives a company, some drive to build new features and having a concrete hackathon event means the company can also provide a better service to the customers and improve their revenues in return.
  • These days, companies are scaling out their innovations by reaching out to everyone. By conducting an external hackathon, one can easily crowd source their solutions from both the internal and external participants and for that, only a minimal investment of capital, time and efforts are needed. Here, when a hackathon is conducted, a team is primarily responsible for the innovation of works and a good amount of hackathon crowd is there ti synthesise those ideas and then build some proof of concepts.
  • Hackathon mainly provides a basic platform and a structure to develop some new ideas. So, it essentially makes things easier for the job companies to implement some innovations. This is the place where new ideas are created.

What are the different types of hackathons?

It is said that the words ‘hack’ and ‘marathon’ join hands together to form the word hackathon. There are actually different types of hackathons depending on the objectives and why they have been conducted. A company or an organisation can decide to conduct a hackathon internally known as the internal hackathon. Or else they can keep it open for public and it is known as external hackathon. Apart from these two hackathons there can be offline hackathon and online hackathon as well. Sometimes, hackathons can be targeted for specific groups of developers or those who have knowledge for certain programming and a particular level of coding expertise.

The different types of hackathons are as follows:

Internal hackathons

This is also popularly known as the corporate hackathons and this is mainly conducted by an organisation for its own employees. This has the aim of crowd sourcing some new ideas. At the same time, it can help promoting entrepreneurship, boosting collaboration and also increasing employee engagement. Here, the company can involve all the technical and non-technical employees together and then promote a cultural collaboration through hackathon.

External hackathons

In these cases, the company engages with people who are not employees of the organisation. Here, the participants are often influenced by the goals and themes that are set in hackathon. This is another form of hackathon which enables the companies to harvest some brilliant ideas across the globe.

Online hackathons

ypes of hackathons and reasons to conduct them often 3
These are virtual hackathons that can really work well when the companies actually want to engage with the employees and simultaneously with the participants from other geographical locations in order to drive some more original ideas. This entire thing or the event is conducted online here.

Offline hackathons

These are conducted to create some interest for the external developers of the company, beta testing of some existing products and also innovation of some new apps. This needs a proper venue or a location to be conducted.

Application based hackathons

These hackathons are mainly based on specific platforms for development like some mobile device operating systems or some video game developments.

So, basically a hackathon is very beneficial for any company or a business to stay in the run and to survive in the market by doing something new and creating something new.