First Ever Krackathon - Reflections & Feedback

Time allocation: Under normal hackathons, the cut-off time was usually very strict (at most a 1-hour extension) to provide fair play for all participants. Since the work quality of 10h vs 24h can't be fairly compared, especially the implemented features, which are a key metric. This is understandable IRL since at work, getting a due date adjustment is only viable if certain conditions are met, i.e., the majority of stakeholders are projecting to miss the appointed milestone.

Post-event stats: This is just my pet peeve as a BI & Analytics Engineer. On top of seeing the submitted projects in Showcase module, it would be an added advantage to post the stats, as this is common best practice for hackathon growth. Trust me, people love vanity metrics. This would be an encouragement for them to participate next time and bring their friends for the ride along. I love seeing these: total participants vs completed submissions, geographic distribution of participants, retention rate, popular stacks and programming languages used, submission categories breakdown, avg lines of code per submission, completion rate (projects submitted vs started), social media engagements (mentions, shares, hashtag reach etc pp.), post event survey response rate and satisfaction scores, no. of projects that continued development post-hackathon. Oh yeah, if not NDA, then the impact metrics like judging stats.