Hack the Law 2017 Participant guide

Friday

We will start Friday afternoon by introducing the topic at hand and the organizers of the event.

Participants, mentors, judges, partners and sponsors are invited to hear more about the findings of our recent market research.

16:00 Registration starts for participants at Tiedekulma/Think Corner

17:00 Event launch presentations @Stage

18:00-19.30 @Basement : Idea pitching, team formation, beverages + sandwiches

23:00 Think Corner closes

After the initial introductory presentations @ Stage students will proceed to the idea pitching area located in Think Corner’s Basement. We will have an open mic round where participants are encouraged to present one or more ideas to address the challenges which were presented before, or something completely different which they find interesting.

A general guideline to keep in mind when pitching your idea:

● 10 seconds to present yourself

● 20 seconds to present the problem you want to solve

● 30 seconds on how you want to reach the solution.

The ideas are typically better to work on when they are broad enough, so that a group of people can come together and give their input to develop it into a prototype or even further. You could pitch a business idea, concept solution or a general interest in an approach. Remember to listen to other ideas and be ready to change and mix up your original ideas as well. Do not worry if you do not want to pitch any ideas of your own, you can still contribute and be an essential member of a team in other ways.

The whole pitch section will take around an hour, with final teams forming around the presented ideas. We will gather the ideas and use a voting system and/or games to select the top ideas and create teams around them. After this initial period and after the recording of work ideas and team members, teams are free to mingle, plan their schedule and organize their work as they please. We have the basement of Think corner all to ourselves, but teams may work wherever suits them best. We will also reserve space to work at the Stage on the ground floor throughout the weekend. Most mentors will be around on Saturday between 11am- 6pm

Beverages and sandwiches will be served in the the Basement and the premises will close at 11pm.

Saturday

Saturday is dedicated to idea development and team work.

The day starts out with breakfast at 08:00-09:30 @ Fönster. From 8:00 to 10:00, we will have Think Corner for ourselves, and from 10:00 onwards it will open for the public. Teams are encouraged to arrive before 10 am.

In the morning we will run two workshops in the Think Corner Basement:

11.00-18.00 Mentors available for guidance

Lunch is served at 13:00-14:00 @ Fönster.

Afternoon coffee and chocolate at 15:00 @ Basement

Dinner will be organised for participants outside of Think Corner

23:00 Think Corner closes

Sunday

08:00 - 09:30 Breakfast @ Fönster

10:00 Pitch coaching @ Basement

14:00 -15:30 Lunch @ Fönster

15:00 Deadline for the Hacks

16:00 Presentations

17:00 DJ starts

18:00 Prize ceremony

22:00 Think Corner closes

Participants

One may want to participate for a Hackathon for a number of reasons. During a Hackathon you can, for example, meet a co-founder, network with other professionals from your field of interest and get otherwise valuable experience. A good Hackathon participant is willing to give up time and effort to develop solutions for the Hackathon challenges. It is good to have both newcomers and more experienced hackers and different skill sets and levels present to achieve fresh perspectives to the task.

Skills and outcome:

The team composition should be as diverse as possible. This is because the solutions that come out of a Hackathon are often a reflection of the teams that develop them. It’s important that the solutions are relevant, diverse and impactful. It is for this reason the team composition should ideally represent a wide spectrum of skills. An example of relevant skills and competencies are:

  • Software developers.
  • Designers and product developers
  • Law students with an emphasis on technology.

A good participant:

  • Wants to have fun, experiment and learn from new people
  • Comes prepared to work for a whole weekend and maybe even has some initial ideas that she wants to pitch
  • Is willing to listen and plays well with others
  • Is not afraid of mistakes or sounding silly (sometimes you need to be silly to come up with a great idea
  • Is open-minded, constructive and friendly to all
  • Understands her role in keeping the space clean and the mood positive.

Practical information for the participants:

The event starts on Friday and runs all the way through Sunday. Please see the timetable for more details. All the teams will work on their hacks on both Saturday and Sunday - however, we hope the participants will get some sleep during the weekend, so Think Corner will close at 23:00. The teams cannot stay overnight.

Food will be served throughout the weekend: see the timetable for more details. Please let us know if you have any special diet requirements so that we can take those into account. We already provide vegetarian/vegan options and most of the food will be lactose free as well.

There will be wifi and power cords available for the teams. Please bring your own laptop and peripherals.

If you have any accessibility needs, please let us know! We want to make the event accessible for everyone.