Dr. Hacklove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tech

As a self-proclaimed business guy I believed I would much sooner run a marathon than have anything to do with a hackathon. However, as life runs on a mysterious course… I found myself Saturday sitting in front of 150 eager developers and designers, running the show for AngelHack Boston. Having barely passed the CSS Styles portion of the 1 week web-design portion of my college education, it is safe to say I felt a bit out of touch with the target market and the challenge. But, after learning from 48 hours of pure hacking, here are three tips to leading a successful hack that you can be proud of:

1. Allow developers to get weird:

The developers and designers who show up to these hacks are smart and creative, I mean a normal person on hallucinogenics type smart and creative. Let them get weird.  Prompt them to build something people wouldn’t expect and remove any prompts or limits to what they are allowed to create.  This will make for some amazing hacks.

2. Feed the Beast:

Hackers eat like a collective Kobayashi and when they’re not fed things can get dangerous.  To give some perspective, the Boston hackers finished the entire supply of the Cambridge Boston Market in less than 1 hour.  It was an experience in and of itself.  Be warned, DO NOT under order.

3. Act like Wilson from Home Improvement…always be peaking in.

Hackathons are awesome because of the natural business possibilities that grow in a short amount of time.  Be sure not to become too consumed with your To-Do list.  Take time to peak over the fence and watch the teams form, ideas grow and pitches ferment.  There are business lessons to be learned in fast-forward.

Armed with these key pieces of advice and a growing interest in all night hacking, its time for you non-techies to search out a hackathon, get involved and learn from the beauty of hyper-speed business creation.