I recently decided to resign/take a leave of absence from the Hackweekend Organizing Committee. Despite this, I feel that’s its important that I share how we collectively organized Malaysia’s Most Premier Hackathon – Hackweekend

What is Hackweekend ?

Hackweekend is a hackathon designed by rebels to challenge the status quo. Its a 24 hour event where a limited number of invite only developers, designers and idea generators come together to mould reality over a weekend and make something happen.

How did it all start ?

Being techies ourselves, Shara, Hakim and myself decided to gather one evening for a FourSquare Day event to catch-up. While chatting, we brought up the dismal state of hackathons in Malaysia and the fact that none of them really did hit the spot. Some of them had great organization and sponsorship but produced little to no results, others produced prototypes but were so niched that they did not gain traction.

Why was this so important ?

Simple. In order to kickstart a commmunity into overdrive, a disruption in the pattern is necessary. We had to introduce something that would ensure that the Startup and Developer Community in Malaysia paid attention to. This in turn would incite them to further produce better solutions and attempt to reach greater heights.

So being rebels ourselves, we proceeded to ask, what if we switched the tables around, what if we asked ourselves how we can run a hackathon like a startup.

The key questions we had to solve were :

  1. How do we make developers WANT to participate ?

  2. How do we make them build apps based on a focus area ?

  3. How do we attract the best talent Malaysia has to offer ? What’s in it for them to join us ?

— Part 2 is up. Click here to read now —

P.S.  Hackweekend 3 is just around the corner. Its happening on March 31st 2012. Apply now to be considered at http://hack.weekend.my