Creating inclusive remote hackathons

Speaker 1: My name is Liz Couteau. I'll tell you a bit more about myself and why I'm chatting about remote hackathons today. So about me, so I have over twelve years experience in marketing, starting advertising. Currently, I'm a product marketing manager at Unity, but previously, I've been about Shopify and Twitter. And then a lot of my work, especially in the developer marketing world, is about conceptualizing and creating developer marketing programs, programs to help attract new developers, help them discover products, become successful, really move throughout that life cycle.

Speaker 1: So one of those programs that I've worked on that I'm super excited to chat with you about is hackathons. And why hackathons? Why do I like them so much? Why do I wanna chat with all of you about them? Well, it's because I believe that when they're done really well, I think they can be really exciting, inspiring, and a very supportive way to onboard new developers to your, to your program, API, or platform.

Speaker 1: So some background. I was I'm obviously enthused about them. But I know a lot of other folks don't feel the same way. Hackathons actually can have a bad reputation. I know, personally, when I've tried to pitch hackathons to my teams, I've gotten some pushback of, ugh, they seem cheesy.

Speaker 1: Are they really worth it? You know, is it just a way to squeezed developers and programmers? It's one great excerpt I grabbed from Alicia Lu, who's an engineer and tech writer. I'll just paraphrase on what she said of, oh, corporate sponsored hackathons are an all win for the sponsoring company. They get a big influx of fresh ideas and developers working themselves illness to just meet a crazy deadline.

Speaker 1: So, yeah, you can see, you know, there's thought of, ugh, corporations really win for them. They get talent. And do developers really get value? Well, I think if they're done well, it can serve the company. But, really, I think it could be really about developers and about, the people participating.

Speaker 1: So for me, I'm, you know, someone who's obviously seen hackathons. Back in university, I participated participated in one. But my first real look, when I got to see one from, I guess, behind the curtains was in 2016. So I mentioned my professional background. I actually used to be at Twitter.

Speaker 1: I was in the Canadian office. I probably should have mentioned at the beginning of this. I'm based in Toronto, Ontario in Canada. So being a part of a regional Twitter team, when the broader global team was running initiatives, I got to see how they were rolled out global so or at a local level, I should say. So I I can't take any credit whatsoever for this hackathon, but I did get to see behind the scene and support the team when they were rolling out in Toronto and hosting local events around it.

Speaker 1: And what really struck me at this time because keep in mind, this is 2016. The excerpt I shared with you was people hating hackathons in 2013. I think Twitter did a really, really great job of kind of reframing it and differentiating this as, hey. This is not another gross hackathon. We're gonna lock you in the room for a weekend, give you Red Bull, and make you give us ideas for a t shirt in a tiny cash prize.

Speaker 1: What really differentiated this that I thought was great was that they reframed the hackathon as a collaborative challenge. It was even called the the Twitter Ads Hackathon. It was called the Twitter API challenge. It was a really good challenge. You know?

Speaker 1: They wanted the com the everyone to come together around this really exciting thing that could be solved as a community with partners. They also gave their partners and developers several weeks to explore a solution. I know a lot of us that participate in hackathons have had the really fast, even if it's a very progressive hackathon or different biz program challenge, yet a short period of time. This time, they actually gave enough time to to recruit people, let people really think and explore the solution. And when you have more time too, it's gonna be naturally inclusive to more people with time restrictions or calendar.

Speaker 1: And then also, no physical presence required. They did have regional restrictions. They did run programs at a local level. As I mentioned, they did a promotion in Toronto where I'm based. But, you know, you can really be from all over the place.

Speaker 1: So if you have constraints that keep you from being in a room physically typing somewhere, that's okay. You can still participate. So that was a really great learning for me. Learned that, really admired the program, moved on my career to Shopify, but kinda kept that those insights in mind and kept chugging, kept growing, kept doing good developer programs. It wasn't until March 2020 that I had to look back and start revaluing things.

Speaker 1: As a lot of you know, and and we're all in different parts of the world today, so we're all affected differently and at different times with the the global pandemic. But being Canada and at Shopify, you know, we were playing in person events. We had a big in person conference, and our road map got completely flipped on its head. So we were like, what can we do now? You know, our developers, how do we engage them?

Speaker 1: How do we kinda keep as much normal? How do we reframe this? How do we, you know, keep the ship going? And really looking at, you know, for me, you know, could we actually somehow find a way? Instead of just we were trying our best to support developers, support our whole community, but could we go further and empower people in this challenging time instead of, you're at home.

Speaker 1: This sucks. Like, what can we do to, like, really further, not just help, but help them feel like part of the solution and, like, their help getting the world back on track again? So given that situation remote, we're all fully remote at my company, most of the world was, And also these key learnings that I lived through about hackathons. For us, it just it really felt like an opportunity to onboard new developers. Can we do a remote hackathon?

Speaker 1: Can we do these best practices And invite p not just our current community, but developers all over the world to join our version, which we called it our our Shopify app challenge, commerce in COVID, and really put it out there to the community. So for us, we did a community based challenge all about our partners. It was four weeks long, and it was purely online, in online landing page, support webinars, and we got some really great reception. As I mentioned, some hackathons were not being viewed well, but we mostly got great, response. So what I'm sharing on screen here is, from a publication very, very well known in my part of the world called Beta Kits.

Speaker 1: So we featured in Beta Kits. It's huge, and they even wrote a whole press article. We got organic pickup saying Shopify challenges partners to build an app that helps entrepreneurs during COVID nineteen. So instead of that rah rah, build for us, it really I love how they have that word partnership, how we are challenging our partners to really help. And I love the you know, Shopify aims to, the challenge aims to empower the Shopify developer community and focus your creativity and technical efforts on critical problem areas.

Speaker 1: So great response. It went really, really well. We got so many apps submitted. We had developers create apps that would eventually end up on the Shopify App Store. We asked for an MVP because it was just four weeks, and creating a whole new app and a whole new business in four weeks is nutty.

Speaker 1: But we have so many apps, and these are just this is a small sample I share here, out of apps that are on our Shopify App Store that came out of this app challenge who are now thriving businesses on their own. So really successful. We'd had some really great learnings, from this. We saw even we surveyed participants after that coming together to build something for merchants affected by COVID nineteen was a top motivation. For us, we gave support.

Speaker 1: We had very classic steer typical hackathon cash prize prize pool that we were giving out for winners. But people, more than getting cash prizes, more than looking for something to occupy themselves with, really liked feeling empowered to help people. And we also, surprisingly, found out that participants were even more motivated by the opportunity to work more closely with the company than the cash prize. We thought, you know, cash prize would be number one reason or second reason, because it's not just the big, yes, it's a prize pool people like winning money, but for us, we also wanted to have a cash prize because, you know, developers' time is super, super valuable. We don't wanna make them feel like we're draining them for ideas.

Speaker 1: Yes. We're giving them a mission, a support, but we wanted to make sure that we recognize their value and we were, paying that forward to them. And then yeah. So but, no, they've I think the cash prize is certainly appreciated by those who got it, but they also just really wanted to work closely with us and to have a mission. And they also just really appreciate the guidance and thought starters we provide, which is another great learning too.

Speaker 1: Instead of saying, oh, COVID nineteen's crazy, or I know I've seen a lot of hackathons where it's like, we wanna do x. Instead of being throwing them in, we gave them a little thought starters. We kinda gave them that warm start. We shared as much data as we could of, you know, this is what we're seeing instead of just let your creativity run wild. We found that, you know, some people did let their creativity run wild and go their own way, but a lot of people appreciate the fact that we just we gave them a little bit of, kindling for the fire, something to to chew on to get started with as they would to tackle this for this challenge.

Speaker 1: So that was what went really well. Some of the things that did not go so well for us, was that was not global, which really we did not love. The Shopify app developer community is all over the world. We do a lot on the platform to reach developers all over the globe. Because we've had that cash prize, because we want the cash prize is so crucial for being a proper hackathon, for recognizing developers' time and efforts, because of contesting law, which I'm not the right person to talk about that.

Speaker 1: Someone else can tell you how how intricate that is, how much it varies from country and even within countries, from province to province, state to state. We had to do a lot of restrictions, restrict it to just six of our many countries and even within then certain states and provinces. And one really interesting thing when, once again, we're talking to our community, which is global, we're differing perceptions around cash prizes. We thought our prize pool is great, but keep in mind, $1 USD in some parts of the world, goes does not go as far as other parts of the world. So paying a developer a thousand dollars USD in one part of the world means very different than in some parts of the world.

Speaker 1: So even though so that value perception was not not equal. And then we also saw that more time was needed, especially for the late joiners. Four weeks we got feedback on was not enough. And a lot of people, you know, people are distracted with the remote hackathon. You know, there's not billboards.

Speaker 1: There's not those physical things. We need to get their attention online when attention is very divided and all over the place right now. People joined late, there wasn't a great way for them to get up to speed quickly when they joined halfway through. So with this in mind, yeah, we had great successes. We knew we wanted to do this program again.

Speaker 1: We want to make it more inclusive for 2021, and the more inclusive really was that global. We hated that we had to do this to just six countries. How could we do this all over the world and really truly invite more developers, more talent, to get involved? So if you're going to run a remote and globally inclusive, experience to make it happen all over the world, three key things I'd really encourage everyone to consider. One, seek out non cash incentives like mentorship and marketing support.

Speaker 1: As I mentioned, people really look at opportunity. We're closer with us, and that's something that has more of a flat perception. It's not how a dollar is perceived differently in different parts of the world. Mentorship can be very invaluable. And also marketing support, we know a lot of developers struggle with marketing and getting their solutions out there.

Speaker 1: So that's a soft way that you can really help them. Another thing, just give ample time and design experiences that are flexible for those with challenging schedules. We all know we differ have different commitments. COVID really shook things up. Things happen.

Speaker 1: People got sick, got had had to help other folks. So when you have the more flexibility and ways to help people whose schedules get interrupted, that really helps keep them on track and engaged in your program. We give them an easy way to get re involved. And then also, offer multiple info and support channels that can be accessed around the clock. Different parts of the world don't have the same bandwidth, for Internet, which really restricts certain communication mediums.

Speaker 1: Some communication mediums and social networks are not involved and are not just available in some part of the world. So, really, however you run your your, hackathon remote challenge, make sure to have a variety of channels. So just a quick what we did with the all this knowledge. I think the site is still live, the twenty twenty one Shopify app challenge. This is something my team designed where we got rid of the cash prize and made it all about, we will give you marketing support and more mentorship throughout.

Speaker 1: So we went with a softer incentive. We made it an eight week challenge. We had this beautiful graphic where we actually really guide through. So back to that, you know, where do people start? What do they do?

Speaker 1: We gave them some more info, resources so that if someone started late, they could quickly even just get a sense of, oh, shoot. I'm starting halfway through. Where should I be by now? And we did get that feedback from people participating that they, they had to take breaks. Things happen.

Speaker 1: Life happens. But having this really clear eight week structure really helped them jump in a lot quicker and get up to speed and not feel like they had to jump the dropout of the hackathon. Community channels, as I said, we leveraged a lot. Email is such a great, generally global one that works really well. It's one of those evils we can't avoid.

Speaker 1: For us, we leveraged Twitter a lot just because Twitter is so public, and it also gave us an opportunity to amplify participants. We have a lot of, followers on the Shopify devs Twitter, so we were able to amplify them and their efforts. And for us, we leverage Discord for office hours. And I will give one hot tip before I wrap up this talk is, one great learning we learned, a small one, is we yes. And some of you are saying, oh my gosh.

Speaker 1: I wanna serve folks all over the globe, but my team's only in one time zone. I can't be up twenty four hours a day. So we made clear we only had one, office hour where we were live, but we had, hey. Go in the office hour channel. Leave questions whenever you want.

Speaker 1: And we would kinda use, like, the green light when we were there, the stop red light when we were gone. But we were finding we had a stop red light. People kinda perceived it as the channel was closed, and they weren't leaving us their questions after hours. Because when we were awake, we could answer your questions, but they just weren't leaving them. But we did a small little thing and changed our status from that stop emoji to the sleeping emoji.

Speaker 1: People just understood, oh, this is a channel. Someone is here. Someone's, you know, in the station looking at it. They're just sleeping right now. So I'm gonna leave them the the comment my question while they're sleeping.

Speaker 1: And I think it also added a nice humanity. So just one small subtle thing, but when we found that we showed that we were sleeping, not that we were closing our office hours, people received that well, and we were able to get questions from all hours that we were able to answer when we were awake. So one last thing. There's so much more to inclusivity. This was a kind of a a rapid fire talk.

Speaker 1: That was something like those global considerations. But, you know, definitely some best practices. Make sure that all of your landing pages follow accessibility principles. You really test. I'm sure there's so many speakers, probably even speaking or talking, resources to make sure that it really is inclusive for people that have, visual impairments, color blindness of all sorts, and that everything's keyword reader accessible.

Speaker 1: Also, showcase diverse mentors and participants too. Make sure that who you're staffing, who you're using as mentors, who's answering questions really reflects the global community you're trying to reach. And when you're conceptualizing, definitely don't just your usual group of folks, make sure you're talking to a diverse group of folks. Have community standards as well, which is just great for for safety and making sure establishing a really safe space and standards and everyone knows how to get involved and to participate. And then also, check that incentives can reach all countries.

Speaker 1: As I said, cash is a really hard thing, because of contesting laws. Different taxation is a tough one. And if you are doing swag, which can be hard, make sure that you work with a vendor. I won't go into stories around trying to ship swag internationally, but, make sure you have a vendor. And that's I know I'm at time.

Speaker 1: Yes. That is it. Principles. I will be in the speaker chat after if you have any more questions. Thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 1: And if you have questions, happy to after.