This October, Major League Hacking (MLH) is delving deeper into the Open Source community by sponsoring All Things Open 2021, a three-day conference focusing on the resources and people that are revolutionizing Open Source.

During All Things Open, you’ll be able to find the MLH team at our booth in the conference expo and after our panel, Where Do Great Open Source Contributors, Maintainers, & Hires Come From. Stop by to learn about MLH, the MLH Fellowship, and our global developer community. This is a great opportunity to explore what working with MLH would look like for your company. We’ll also be running a raffle for anyone who drops by where you could win a microphone, Zoom camera, ring light, and more.

Additionally, MLH will be hosting the first-ever annual MLH Open Source Awards to recognize leaders who are making a positive impact on the Open Source community. There are three categories for which nominations are being accepted:

• Inclusion & Diversity Award — The company / project / program doing the most to promote building a diverse, welcoming community.
• Next Generation Award — The company / project / program doing the most to attract, educate, and retain the next generation of open source citizens.
• Community Award — The company / project / program doing the most to build the broader Open Source community.

Nominations will close on Thursday, September 30th, and will be chosen by a panel of industry experts based on the quality of the applications. They will be announced at the conference on Monday, October 18th. Submit your nominations now!

Open Source is incredibly important to developers, but many struggle to get started contributing. 93% of hackers reported that they believe contributing to Open Source will be important in their career but only 41% of respondents have actually managed to contribute to Open Source. Most developers feel like they either aren’t skilled enough yet or just don’t know where to get started

When the pandemic hit and more than 40,000 community members lost their summer opportunities, we saw the perfect moment to help our community get started with Open Source and to familiarize them with remote work. This was when we launched the MLH Fellowship, a 12-week remote internship alternative for aspiring technologists. Instead of interning at a single company, they learn to contribute to real-world Open Source projects from our partners such as GitHub, Facebook, AWS, and Adobe.

Over the last 12 months, nearly 600 Fellows have graduated from the MLH Fellowship. These Fellows submitted almost 10,000 Pull Requests into popular Open Source projects like React, Flask, and AWS Amplify with a 75% merge rate. Many of them have since landed internships and jobs with our partners too! After seeing all this success, we knew we needed to get the word out about the program, and so we decided to partner with All Things Open to find other companies that want to empower the next generation of Open Source contributors!

We could not be more excited to be supporting All Things Open 2021 and the incredible Open Source community. If you are at the conference, please drop by our booth to say hello!

Originally published at https://news.mlh.io on September 22, 2021.

MLH Sponsors All Things Open 2021 was originally published in Major League Hacking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What is a guild?

A guild is a smaller group within the larger MLH Community. Often organized by hackathon organizing teams and local tech meetups, these groups are great ways to make new friends with similar passions and interests as you! Whether you live on the same side of the globe or not, this is an opportunity to expand your horizons and your network.

What is Local Hack Day? How do guilds come into play at these events?

Local Hack Day is our week-long celebration of hacking. We host them three times a year and they are centered around the MLH principle of Learn, Build, and Share. Our upcoming event, Local Hack Day: Learn is October 10th through 18th and will center around learning new skills. No matter your experience level, there will be plenty for you to do. There will be challenges varying in difficulty and topics, ranging from coding to design to entrepreneurship and beyond, and you will earn points for yourself and your guild by completing them. Other ways to earn points include attending live technical sessions run by the MLH team, panels, mini-events, and guild members.

Make sure to sign up for the other two events, Local Hack Day: Build (January 9th — January 17th) and Local Hack Day: Share (April 3rd — April 11th)!

Guilds are a great way to make friends. Earn points for your guild and see how well you do! It’s so much fun to code with new friends and learn new skills to add to your resume.

Should I organize a guild? What does that entail?

Organizing a guild is not as intimidating as it may sound. All you have to do is fill out a form and you’re on your way. We will provide you with pre-made templates and graphics to make it easier for you to spread the word. You can promote your guild on social media, via email, and on the MLH Discord in the LHD-Learn-Join-My-Guild channel.

If you belong to a hackathon organizing team or a local club, forming a guild is a great way to engage with your community in a fairly hands-off way. With all of the programming pre-planned for you, all you have to do is spread awareness and MLH will take care of the rest. We highly recommend this and sprinkling in some fun meetups or coffee hangouts to get to know your guild members better.

So what is holding you back? Start your guild now!

We hope this helped you to understand what guilds are and if organizing one is the right move for you. Make sure you are all signed up for Local Hack Day: Learn to join in on the fun and check out the event website to learn more! If you have any outstanding questions, feel free to email us at localhackday@mlh.io and we’ll respond within 2–3 business days. Thanks again and happy hacking!

Guilds: Debugging the Mystery was originally published in Major League Hacking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As always, the artwork that came out of the event was nothing short of a masterpiece. We are surprised that they haven’t been hung up in a gallery (although the originals they were based on certainly were).

We saw hackers take their real-life experiences as technologists into their own hands as they completed the challenge of drawing a comic about tech. Wow, did these make us laugh! The creativity that was put into these was truly unmatched in hilarity, authenticity, and artistry.

INIT By The Numbers

This season kicked off with a burst of energy on your part. You learned by attending live technical sessions with nearly 6,000 attendees during them. The topics ranged from Build a Calculator to Create a 3D Model and beyond. If you want to take a look at any of them, you can find them all on our Twitch channel.

We had four incredible panels covering a wide array of topics. The advice given by our lineup of speakers was truly inspiring and impactful. We learned how we can work to make events more inclusive, how organizations can open doors to marginalized communities in tech, and how to make the most of the hacker community. We highly encourage you to take a peek at them: The Future of Tech Education, Advice from Former Hackers, MLH Fellowship Q&A, Diversity in Tech, and Women and Diverse Genders in Tech.

The motivation around building hacks was out of this world. With over 4,300+ projects submitted on Devpost, we saw you get creative with the hacks you built and finding new ways to grow your skillset.

More than that, you shared everything you were doing with the world! Over 800 hackers livestreamed themselves completing hacks and we saw nearly 850 demo videos. Even more, you used your socials to share with friends what you had made with 3,765+ posts. New friends were in abundance with nearly 1,000 new hackers referred!

We had several season announcements that ranged from the new season mascot to the MLH Top 50 to in-person events returning in 2022! In case you missed it, make sure to check out Swift’s keynote.

INIT By The Leaderboards

The guilds at this event had electric energy. Whether that was late night Zoom calls, to Discord high fives, to spamming the Twitch chats with your guild mascot, there was definitely something in the air that we’ve never seen before. BLAHAJGang defended their title as reigning champion with Developer Student Community, EddieHub, and HackOn putting up a good fight.

On another note, we were excited to see some new faces at the top of the Guild Activity leaderboard. Coders Evoke took the top slot followed by BLAHAJGang, CodXCrypt, Micro Club, and Technorats. We even saw hackathon events created their own guilds and participating, two of which made it into the Top 10 (HackOn and GirlsHooHack)!

When it came to individual hackers, we saw some new stars rising in ranks. In the top slot, we have Adam Cameron Drummond followed by Siddharth Maratha, Isha26, Rambabu Malgaya, and Amar Kumar.

Big Thanks To…

MLH INIT could not have been possible without the contributions of some notable groups! We could not be more thankful for working with:

• Jina for helping hackers to learn all about their open-source neural search framework and getting started with Artificial Intelligence.
• .Tech for being the official domain partner of INIT and leading conversations around access to computer science education in tech.
• Xylem for encouraging hackers to create projects focusing on sustainability. The water safety and environmental awareness hacks helped to educate the MLH community on all the ways we can help the Earth.
• Replit for providing our hackers with a free month of their hacker plan. Their in-browser IDE platform proved very useful for our attendees as they built their projects.
• Our panelists whose advice and insight were invaluable and greatly appreciated! We can’t wait to see how it will impact the way they navigate the tech space.
• MLH Coaches for leading some incredible workshops, live technical sessions, and mini-events. They were an absolute blast and this event wouldn’t be the same without you and your contagious enthusiasm!
• Guild leaders and hackers for bringing the excitement and go-getter energy that makes this community so special!

How Can I Get More Involved?

Inspired by INIT to get more involved in the MLH community? We’ve got tons of ways that you can get more involved this season!

Local Hack Day: Learn

Did you enjoy MLH INIT? Then you’re gonna love Local Hack Day: Learn on October 10th — 18th! This 8-day event is a great opportunity to learn new skills through live technical sessions, beginner-friendly workshops, and panels all geared towards helping set you up for a season of hacking. Sign up right now!

MLH Localhost Workshops

Want to learn new skills this season? Join us for our free, beginner-friendly technical workshops that run Monday — Saturday in all time zones. Find a topic that interests you from How to Build a Full Stack Web App with AWS to Intro to Python. Learn alongside hackers from around the world in these peer-led workshops. You can also host your own if you’d like. See upcoming workshops now!

The MLH Hackathon League

Fill your weekends with fun at our hackathons (24–36 hour invention competitions)! These events are a great place to pick up new skills and build hacks to add to your portfolio. Each event is special whether it’s beginner-focused, gender-focused, themed, and more. Find one that’s the right fit for you by looking at our season page!

MLH Hackcon IX

Interested in empowering your local hacker community? Don’t miss out on MLH Hackcon IX on August 14th — 15th! Our annual organizer conference is FREE and you can expect to hear of all the ways you can organize whether that’s a hackathon, workshop, guild, or community. There will be peer-led workshops, talks on community, and discussions aplenty. In addition to these sessions, you can look forward to networking activities with a twist from mini-events to Color War! Make sure to sign up now!

Fellowship

The MLH Fellowship is back for Fall 2021! For this semester, we’ll be offering two different full-length (12 weeks) programs (Open Source and Software Engineering) designed to help you improve your skills and build out your portfolio. You’ll gain the type of applied experience that employers want to see while working with your peers from around the world on exciting projects. Apply now — applications close September 13th!

See you soon and Happy Hacking,

Emily and the MLH INIT Team

INITiating the 2022 Hackathon Season was originally published in Major League Hacking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Interested in DevOps or Site Reliability Engineering? The MLH Production Engineering Fellowship, powered by Facebook provides an opportunity for 100 aspiring software engineers to broaden their skills and career options. Learn important production engineering and DevOps skills over the course of a 12-week paid educational program built on the content from the Linux Foundation.

Production Engineering is a hybrid between software and systems engineering. Site Reliability Engineering and DevOps keep sites like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp running smoothly and scaling efficiently. Surround yourself with like-minded peers in the 12-week Product Engineering Fellowship and get access to mentors and industry experts. Level up your knowledge and learn a broad array of technical skills to open the door to a variety of exciting and challenging new career options.

The Production Engineering Track starts in June, and guarantees an educational stipend to each participant. Applications are open now until May 28, 2021. Eligible students are rising sophomores or juniors who are United States, Mexico, or Canada based, enrolled in a 4-year degree-granting program, and able to code. MLH invites and encourages people to apply who identify as women or non-binary. MLH also invites and encourages people to apply who identify as Black/African American or LatinX. In partnership with Facebook, MLH is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive tech industry and providing learning opportunities to under-represented technologists.

Read more in our blog post and apply now on our website.

Originally published at https://news.mlh.io on May 11, 2021.

Production Engineering Track of the MLH Fellowship, powered by Facebook was originally published in Major League Hacking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

CALLING ALL HACKERS! Whether this is your first day of coding or your thousandth, come kick it with the global hacker community at our kickoff event for the 2022 Hackathon Season.

What is INIT?

INIT is a celebration for the start of the 2022 Hackathon Season! While this is the first time we are running INIT, the format will feel familiar to those who have participated in Local Hack Day. You can expect to complete challenges, hear about BIG community announcements, chat at hacker hangouts, enjoy fun live sessions, and make new memories (and memes). Sign up now!

What can I expect at the event?

We will be bringing back all of your favorite features of MLH events such as Local Hack Day style challenges, live technical sessions with MLHers, mini-events galore, and some cool content from our partners! Here’s a sneak peek:

• Lots of exciting 2022 Season announcements
• Beginner-friendly workshops
• Challenges for all difficulty levels and all topics such as design, social, technical, entrepreneurial
• Hacker-run guilds and leaderboards
• Panels and talks from friends of MLH and our partners
• Live sessions run by MLHers
• And maybe an appearance from Totally Not Ryan (TNR)

What does “INIT” mean?

INIT is short for “initiate”! In a computer system, init is the very first process that runs as a computer boots up. Since it kicks off a computer’s work, we thought it would be the perfect name to call our kickoff event for the new 2022 Hackathon Season.

What will be announced at INIT?

While in the past we have made many season announcements at Hackcon (our organizer conference), INIT felt like the perfect place to share exciting hacker-centric news. With that being said, we will be announcing the following:

• The MLH Season Mascot
• New Hacker Perks and Resources
• The MLH Top 50 Class of 2021
• And much more…

How can I get involved?

Similar to Local Hack Day, there are many ways to get involved. If you find yourself naturally gathering friends together for hackathons and other community events, you will make an amazing guild leader. As a guild leader, you’ll encourage people to complete challenges, earn points, and hang out together.

If organizing your own guild sounds a little intimidating, you can still join in on the fun by finding a guild suited to your interests. This is how most of our hackers will choose to participate in the event. Whatever you decide, we want you to have fun and enjoy the event on your own terms. Sign up now!

Can I get swag at this event?

Yes, of course! INIT 2022 will be the first opportunity of the 2022 Hackathon Season to get swag and it will even include our new season mascot… You’ll have to participate to find out!

Sign up now!

Originally published at https://news.mlh.io on April 29, 2021.

Kick Off the Hackathon Season at MLH INIT 2022! was originally published in Major League Hacking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What is Hackcon IX?

Hackcon is the conference for hacker community leaders. Hackcon is the only conference where hackathon organizers and hacker community leaders can come together, learn from each other, and build relationships. We bring together organizers from across the globe for two days of online content presented by community members, for community members. This is a unique opportunity to meet community leaders from around the world just like you.

Get your free tickets and swag bundles now!

Who Should Go To Hackcon?

If you consider yourself a leader in the hacker community, this conference is a great place to meet other like-minded hackers. Whether you’re thinking about organizing an event or you fall under any of the following categories (a hackathon organizer, guild leader, MLH Localhost organizer, or club president), this event promises to have talks that will expand your views of leadership and event organizing.

What Can You Expect?

Awesome Talks

At Hackcon, you will have access to high-quality speakers and community leaders from around the world that have experienced the same problems you are dealing with. There is no better place to learn how to organize and run hacker communities than at Hackcon. We’ll have content ranging from quick lightning talks over a variety of topics, discussions where you’ll get to share your thoughts and hear from others, and hands-on workshops where you’ll develop your skills.

New Friends

The best part of the conference is the relationships you build while you are here. You will meet passionate, smart community leaders just like you at Hackcon. To ensure you have plenty of opportunities to meet other organizers, we’ll be running mini-games, a book club, and lots of time to chat to other organizers in Discord.

Networking Opportunities

Similar to all the new friends you’ll make, there will be tons of opportunities for professional networking and development. The relationships you build here will support you for the rest of your career.

Friendly Competition

We will be rolling out some fun new programming changes at Hackcon IX this year! We will be randomizing your assignment onto a team and you will rep your team’s color. Earn points by attending talks, participating in organizer hangouts, and fun mini-events. There might even be some fun competitions for you to try out! We can’t wait to see which color team comes out at the top!

How Can I Get More Involved With Hackcon?

If you’ve organized an event in the past, impart your wisdom and share your experiences by giving a talk at Hackcon (it’s not as scary as it sounds, we promise!). You should consider applying to be a speaker! As Hackcon is a conference consisting primarily of Student Hackathon Organizers, we understand you might not have experience presenting at a professional conference. We’ll work with you to review your talk and help prepare you for an excellent session! If you want to check out some previous talks, take a look here!

Originally published at https://news.mlh.io on April 23, 2021.

Gearing Up for Hackcon IX: What You Need To Know was originally published in Major League Hacking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Whether you tuned in to see BLAHAJGang, EddieHub, and Developer Student Community (DSC) duke it out for the top slot on the guild leaderboard, wanted to get a friendly visit from Totally Not Ryan, or you just wanted to Learn, Build, and Share, the event was a success all due to you and your amazing projects. We had an absolute blast looking through the amazing challenges you completed, the designs you created, and the hacks you coded! We can’t wait to see what new challenges you’ll take on at INIT 2022 when we kick off the 2022 Hackathon Season! Before then, let’s take a trip down memory lane and see what you accomplished!

Local Hack Day By The Numbers

Hackers were more active than ever at this event! We saw over 7,000 hackers with almost 85,000 points earned. Those hackers submitted more than 5,200 hacks on Devpost, and an additional 17,000 technical and non-technical challenges via our submission forms. You continue to impress us!

Not only were our forms submissions on the popping with notifications, but so were our social platforms! We saw just under 1,500 social media posts and 17,800+ messages in Discord. Y’all were definitely in the sharing spirit because we also saw 1,200+ referrals and we know you can attest to how fun it is to hack with friends.

When it came to mini-events, you were on the ball. From Chrome Dino and GeoGuesser to a community drawing of MS Paint Bob Ross and Sketchful, we have never seen a group of hackers more excited to get creative and have fun!

Not only were the mini-events fun but the livestreams (technical and otherwise) were some of our favorite times! We completed challenges together on steam such as “Create a Brand Concept with Canva” and “Hack the Weather: Use a Weather API” as well as played around with “Slideshow Party” and “Baking with MLH Co-Founder Jon Gottfried”. In case you missed them, feel free to catch them on our Twitch channel!

Local Hack Day By The Leaderboards

At this iteration of LHD: Share, there were 30 hackers that rose to the top of the leaderboards! There was more competition at this event for the top slots than ever before and we were surprised at those who claimed them. BLAHAJGang took the top ranking for guilds with over 15,000 points with EddieHub right behind at close to 9,000. The Guild Activity Leaderboard was topped by ataxia followed by Technorats.

As for the individual hacker ranking, we saw Adam Cameron Drummon at the top with 236 points with Shubham_hekrrr and starkizard tied for second place with 229. We wonder how many points will be at the top of the leaderboard for INNIT 2022!

Big Thanks To…

We had some incredible partners at this event who helped to equip our hackers with top-of-the-line products and resources! If you didn’t get a chance yet, make sure to take a look at the awesome ways they are helping hackers like yourself.

• Linode for empowering our hackers with $100 in cloud credits and providing awesome documentation on how to get started with using Linode cloud services as well as their great workshop!
• Agora for sharing their RTE Certificate Program to help hackers learn coding skills, build portfolios, and get certified & for their awesome workshop on setting up a low-code Video Chat application!
• Codota for giving our hackers the opportunity to use the Tabnine text editor extension that implements AI technology to autocomplete your code for you!
• Verisign for being the official domain sponsor of LHD: Share and getting us all excited about .COM domain names!

How Can I Get More Involved?

That’s a great question! Here are several ways you can get more involved in MLH to gear up for the 2022 season!

MLH INIT 2022

Join us June 27th through July 5th to kick off the 2022 Hackathon Season in this week-long celebration of hacking! We’ll have challenges for all technical and experience levels to complete all week, swag for you to earn (so you can start your season in style), and announcements about what MLH is doing to empower you going forward. Sign up now!

MLH Localhost Workshops

Participate in beginner-friendly technical workshops led by MLH Coaches and community members! These workshops cover the latest and hottest topics in tech from Blockchain to Full Stack Web Dev. You can learn it all through these workshops! They are held for all time zones on Monday — Saturday! See all upcoming workshops!

The MLH Hackathon League

Want to try out your new skills at an invention competition? Try out an MLH hackathon! There are still a few events left this season and there will be Hosted by MLH hackathons all summer! Whether it’s run by us or is a membered event, you are bound to make new friends, industry contacts, and add new skills and a hack to your portfolio and resume. Plus, the swag is pretty cool! Sign up right away!

MLH Fellowship

Looking to level up your development skills? Check out the MLH Fellowship where we have 3 different programs designed to help you improve your skills and build out your portfolio! We’ve got the Explorer program designed for those starting out and looking to build out their portfolio. There’s also the open-source program for those looking to gain experience working on huge projects used by people all over the world. Lastly, we have the Externship for those looking to work with real companies and organizations on exciting projects. Apply now!

Originally published at https://news.mlh.io on April 19, 2021.

Sharing the Fun of LHD: Share 2021 was originally published in Major League Hacking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

MLH Fellowship Focuses on Diversity

Talent is evenly distributed but opportunity is not. That is why a core goal of the MLH Fellowship is to help under-represented technologists build their skills and confidence in an inclusive, supportive community of learners. In each iteration of the program, we take steps in the right direction with the support of our amazing partners.

Racial Diversity

In Spring 2021, we launched the third iteration of our Fellowship, inviting 123 fellows from around the globe to level up their skill set by working on projects, contributing to major open-source repositories, and collaborating with industry experts. These fellows have become living proof that the gap between typical and atypical candidates is something of a social construct. The achievements of our Spring Cohort in Open Source, Production Code & beyond, speak to a presence of tech talent in all corners of the world and all walks of life.

As we have experienced in past cohorts, the diversity of our applicants spans multiple intersections of race, gender, and geographic location. This makes for a melting pot of ideas, thoughts, and cultural backgrounds, giving us the opportunity to add to a more diverse workforce.

In the Spring, we primarily maintained our demographic distribution, with more notable increases in South Asian & Hispanic / Latino candidate numbers nearly doubling.

Gender Diversity

As we have in the past, MLH has continued to focus on driving gender equity in our admissions process. As such, our focus remains on creating a safe space for fellows of all identities and encouraging opportunities for the female-identifying and gender-non-binary hackers in our community.

In the 2020 season alone, 42% of hackers at our U.S. events identified as female or non-binary which is up 18% from 2019 and higher than the breakdown of gender in tech at large– 21% female in the United States. We strive to create welcoming opportunities and spaces in our community in several ways, one of which is by working with gender-inclusive organizations and hackathons. In the 2020 MLH hackathon season, we powered 16 hackathons focused on empowering underrepresented hackathons.

As we strive to empower hackers throughout the world, the gender breakdown of the MLH Fellowship has become indicative of the work we do to promote inclusivity. We do not aim to change the shape of our applicants, but rather, our goal is to cultivate and provide a space that reflects the identities of the hackers that our community is composed of.

Our spring cohort saw a 3.49% increase in female-identifying fellows. Our goal is to continue driving past the Computer Science enrollment averages in the U.S., which currently sits between 18–20%.

Global Diversity

As the world continues to pivot towards a primarily digital model of doing things, MLH has already iterated on and improved our entirely digital offerings over the course of the 2020 season. This includes more than 200 hackathons & 3 Fellowship cohorts. With a fully remote and digital presence, we have managed to support a global community of hackers, fostering international collaboration and cooperation in the process. In light of this, our efforts to provide hackers with even more opportunities to level up have been ongoing, as evidenced by an applicant pool from over 100 countries in Spring 2021.

We were able to accept fellows from 20 of those countries, with more than two thirds of our Spring cohort hailing from outside of the United States. Our global distribution of fellows increased by nearly 5% during the Spring and the outlook for our future cohorts looks equally promising.

We understand, however, that diversity spans across a variety of intersections including race, gender, socioeconomic status, disability, neurodiversity & many more. With this in mind, we looked to incorporate more educational diversity into our Spring cohort. 26% of our fellows, at the start of the Spring Cohort, were not enrolled in University, compared to the 8% of non-students hackers at our 2020 Hackathons.

With our third batch of fellows on the cusp of their cohort graduations, the differences in impact, attainment, and effectiveness with past cohorts is negligible. While our ability to identify talent from the vast sea of applications we receive every 4 months out of the year has certainly improved, what that talent has done with their access to the Fellowship opportunity has been constant. They continue to awe and impress at every turn, upholding our standard of excellence and allowing us to build upon the goals of our program, alongside all of our amazing partners and stakeholders.

* All data from this piece is from the Fall 2020 & Spring 2021 MLH Fellowship Application and Acceptances

Originally published at https://news.mlh.io on April 2, 2021.

MLH Fellowship Focuses on Diversity was originally published in Major League Hacking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As we head back to school and kick off another semester, the schedule for the next few months is full of tons of amazing hackathons organized by hackers alike across the globe. Last month alone, there were be 42 hackathons! With so many events coming up, it begs the question, “How can I make the most of a digital hackathon?”

Keeping this in mind, we turned to the MLH community to see what they suggested for those new to the digital hackathon scene and this is what we were able to collect.

Build with something new

One of the best parts of hackathons is that they are a quick way to not only learn something new but to build with it. This is a surefire way to learn how something is helpful through real-world application and definitely helps your portfolio to show your diversity in skills.

The best advice I learned is to sign up with a learning mindset. Creating a project should not be the only takeaway during a hackathon. It’s important that you learn and try your best during a hackathon instead of aiming to win. Even if you don’t win or your project doesn’t go as planned, as long as you learned something new, you’re already a winner. — Neala Mendoza

Don’t think too much about your skillset, just participate in a hackathon. You’ll learn way more and at a much faster rate than otherwise. — Neha Koppikar

Try out a workshop

A great way to learn new things is by attending an MLH Localhost workshop, our beginner-friendly technical workshops that are peer-led. While you can find them being run regularly throughout the week, this can be a fun way to learn alongside your teammates or meet new people! Check out our regular weekly workshop schedule here or find one being run at an upcoming hackathon.

Hackathons are a great place to learn new technologies and frameworks, a great place to learn these new skills are at hackathon workshops! When some people talk about hackathons, they often let out the importance of hackathon workshops. Every hackathon has a bunch of amazing workshops, led by amazing people that you can connect with! You might even use that new skill in your project or other future hackathons! — Kyle Java

Participate in mini-events

Mini-events are great for breaking up all of your time spent hacking. It gives you a chance to get silly with other hackers participating that weekend. Whether it’s cup stacking or slideshow karaoke, mini-events are a fun way to mix things up during those long hacking hours.

Make sure to keep updated with [mini-]events, because there will be fun things to do and things to learn aside from just creating your project. Most digital hackathons have both a messaging platform like Slack or Discord, and a virtual event that is often hosted on Hopin or Twitch. One of my favorite virtual events was at HackDavis where they had a cooking show! — Gideon Tong

Meet people at team-building sessions

Signing up for an online event alone? Not to worry! Many digital hackathons run team-building sessions or team-building chat rooms where you can meet hackers with different backgrounds than you who you can collaborate with for the weekend.

Search for a diverse team with designer(s), coder(s), storyteller(s) and creative minds. Don’t focus on technique !— Alain Raap

Invest in the community

The thing that makes events so special is the community. Each event draws new people together for a weekend of fun and hacking. While you may feel a tendency to crank out code and hack for hours on end, what will make your experience the most meaningful is meeting the other hackers participating!

Plan your time to be able to invest enough time into the Hackathon. You can use this opportunity to network and get to know more people in your field of interest. — Cyndrella Wafula

Don’t hesitate to make new friends! The great thing about a digital hackathon is that there are hackers from all over the world who may have never met before! — Mara Hart

Don’t forget…

We hope you’ll decide to join us for one of our upcoming digital hackathons this season. Whether you’re interested in finding a makeathon, datathon, gender-focused event, high school event, themed hackathon, or whatever you can think of, I’m sure we have an event for you. You can find them on our website. To leave this you on a positive note, I think hacker Swaroop Raj Lama said it best:

Focus on the positive vibe around you. Be you, enjoy and learn. — Swaroop Raj Lama

Happy Hacking,

Emily and the MLH team

How to Make the Most of a Digital Hackathon? was originally published in Major League Hacking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Local Hack Day: Build was nothing short of magical in every sense of the word! In just 8 short days, you all turned an event into so much more; you turned it into a community. From late-night Discord hangouts and inside jokes to Chrome Dinosaur and Totally Not Ryan memes, LHD: Build would not have been the same without each and every one of you.

Local Hack Day By The Numbers

We were completely blown away by the number of hackers who participated in Local Hack Day: Build and came back session after session for workshops, technical live sessions, and mini-events! These events were booming with thousands of hackers tuning in to learn new skills, play games, and hang out with Ryan and Mary for leaderboard updates. This amounted to over 30,000 check-ins around the world!

Our Discord was lighting up with notifications as hackers sent messages at all hours of the day. There were over 15,000 messages sent and we had tons of new hackers join us (2,803 in fact). We really enjoyed seeing you all connect with each other and form new friendships. We hope that you’ll be able to take these new relationships beyond Local Hack Day and into weekend Member Event hackathons and future events as well.

Not only was Discord ablaze with notifications, but our socials blew up too. We saw over 2,000 posts across all social platforms! You were so engaged all week long and sharing out your favorite moments along the way.

Some of our favorite photos included photos from “cupstacking” (seen above), fun with Blahaj, and lots of coffee meetups. Make sure to take a look at all of the #LocalHackDay posts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn! We hope you enjoy them as much as we did!

We can’t fail to mention all of the amazing art you all created! Here are just a few of our favorites:

Local Hack Day By The Leaderboards

The work all of you put into this week was mind-blowing. Together, you completed just under 16,000+ challenges with over 6,00 of those being submitted on Devpost for a total of 68,000+ total points earned! You nearly broke our spreadsheets three or four times with all the points you earned and that in itself is a feat!

A huge congratulations to the hackers and guilds that made their way up the leaderboards! It’s so inspiring to see how hard you worked all week to learn new skills, build new hacks, and make new friends! Out of thousands of participants, these 10 hackers raised to the top of the ranks.

There were some really great moments throughout the process like seeing guilds running their own events, meeting new friends who lived across the world through the power of a guild, and all of the fun inside jokes you shared in Discord.

We loved seeing the formation of ESTechies, a group of hackers that came together because of their shared timezone. They ended up recruiting a ton of hackers and making the leaderboard.

Of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the accomplishment of EddieHub in surpassing the top guild at LHD: Learn, DSC, with their total points.

We can’t wait to see what the leaderboards will look like at Local Hack Day: Share!

Big Thanks To…

• Our guild leaders who brought together thousands of hackers for a weekend of fun and camaraderie
• The thousands of hackers who participated at all hours of the day and night all in the pursuit of knowledge and learning

Don’t Miss Out On Local Hack Day: Share

Local Hack Day: Share is quickly approaching in just a few weeks! LHD: Share is a week-long celebration of sharing everything you’ve learned as a hacker. If you’ve been hacking with us all year, we’re excited to have you back. If this is your very first event, we’ve got a ton of beginner-friendly challenges for you to complete that’ll have you shipping your hack like a pro in no time. You’ll have your pick of technical, design, and social challenges to complete — each with an emphasis on sharing your work. Sign up for early registration now!

How Can I Get More Involved?

That’s a great question! Here are several ways you can get more involved in MLH this season!

MLH Localhost Workshops

Participate in beginner-friendly technical workshops led by MLH Coaches and community members! These workshops cover the latest and hottest topics in tech from Blockchain to Full Stack Web Dev. You can learn it all through these workshops! They are held for all time zones on Monday — Saturday! See all upcoming workshops!

The MLH Hackathon League

Want to try out your new skills at an invention competition? Try out an MLH hackathon! Whether it’s run by us or is a membered event, you are bound to make new friends, industry contacts, and add new skills and a hack to your portfolio and resume. Plus, the swag is pretty cool! Sign up right away!

The MLH Fellowship

Looking to level up your development skills? Check out the MLH Fellowship where we have 3 different programs designed to help you improve your skills and build out your portfolio! We’ve got the Explorer program designed for those starting out and looking to build out their portfolio. There’s also the open-source program for those looking to gain experience working on huge projects used by people all over the world. Lastly, we have the Externship for those looking to work with real companies and organizations on exciting projects. Apply now!

Local Hack Day: Share

Local Hack Day: Share is a week-long celebration of sharing everything you’ve learned as a hacker. If you’ve been hacking with us all year, we’re excited to have you back. If this is your very first event, we’ve got a ton of beginner-friendly challenges for you to complete that’ll have you shipping your hack like a pro in no time. You’ll have your pick of technical, design, and social challenges to complete — each with an emphasis on sharing your work. Sign up for early registration now!

Records Shattered at Local Hack Day: Build was originally published in Major League Hacking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.