MinneHack

MinneHack is an annual, Minneapolis based hackathon I co-founded in 2014. I was responsible for event management, sponsor relations, online presence, branding, marketing, and also performed as emcee.

Growth

The event quickly grew into the largest regional hackathon, attracting participants from across the United States and even internationally. We drew attendance by doing things like making it 100% free to attend, including transportation.

Partnership

The many Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the Twin Cities, combined with the students we brought in from across geographies, produced opportunities to showcase talent and forge new careers.

Our sponsors included local companies like Target, Best Buy, Optum, but also Microsoft, Google, Dell – and many others.

Success

We set everyone up for success by getting hackers solving real problems that were relevant to sponsors' businesses.

Many hackathon competitions fail because they're left too open-ended. With only 24 hours to build, teams spend too much time ideating instead of building. Those that do get something built often struggle to explain their applications' value proposition. Everyone is left wondering... what's the point of all this?

We made sure MinneHack was different by aligning everyone around event prompts. We worked with our sponsors to create well defined event prompts that often incorporated APIs, data, and/or hardware provided by our sponsors.

This formula was a great success: sponsors became truly invested event partners, the prompts kept teams focused and productive, while ensuring our sponsors got to see a wide range of experimentation produced using their own assets.

Impact

In the three years I was involved with the event, MinneHack brought together 3,000+ engineers and designers from 50+ Universities and Colleges across 25 states together with more than 50+ industry sponsors. It was an incredible opportunity to bring together builders and businesses through competition and partnership.