Hackathon experience improvement: follow-up blog posts, newsletters, social posts

[jlengstorf]

From @cdvillard:

I think it'd be pretty neat to have honorable mentions from those who submitted to the hackathon featured in a dedicated follow-up blog post, a newsletter, and/or on socials, with consent. That can help a lot of folks who could use the extra visibility for projects or to get hired.

Right now, the incentive is to build something that qualifies and to get it in fast for gear, but by highlighting work, you're adding incentive beyond working well + fast.

This adds some operational overhead but is a very good idea. Low-hanging fruit here:

• Write a blog post to announce the hackathon end and highlight some projects
• Feature all the devs who submitted (avatars, at least, linking to profiles) and maybe their projects — this will depend on how many projects are submitted I suppose?
• Send a newsletter with results and name drops
• Select a few projects to share on social media (probably not all of them)

Is there any concern about fairness here? Is it just... at the discretion of the CodeTV team? I think yes, but should probably consider this a bit.

[cdvillard]

I think if it's fair if you state obviously that these are staff picks and not indicative of any selected "winners" or anything. Maybe each CodeTV staffer can pick one and write a blurb about why they like it.

I wonder if there's additional legal behind featuring them all in a lookup table of the valid submissions that can filter on season, but that'd make it real easy to write an end-of-'thon post with picks and just say "if you want to see all the submissions, check them out on the WDC hackathon DB!"

[jlengstorf]

I wonder if there's additional legal behind featuring them all in a lookup table

I think this can be managed with minor language updates in the TOC, and folks can check the box to keep it private if they prefer not to be included

I like the idea of having apps in a gallery of some sort