Everybody can hack @ETHGlobal Hackathon

Are hackathons only for developers? Can non-technical people attend there? Could we speak the same language? These were the questions in my mind as a more business-side person.

Oct 23, 2023

Hello hello. This is Begüm and this will be my first public writing.

Have you ever attended a hackathon?

Are hackathons only for developers? Can non-technical people attend there? Could we speak the same language? These were the questions in my mind as a more business-side person.

Last May(12-14, May 2023), we decided to attend the ETHGlobal Lisbon hackathon as two from the product management side with no coding skills. We staked(0.05 ETH) on ETHGlobal to confirm our spots at this event. After confirmation, we started to think about How we will join a team/Who could attend our team formed from product people.

The last night before the flight, we tried to learn the all needed information to build a project to receive back staked ETH but we were too late :) We just had a project idea but there was no skill set to build it on our side. Neither we don't know how to code nor how web3 processes are handled on the development side(Both we worked on web3 projects on the product side).

After arrival, we attended to ETHGlobal Cafe event to meet with people. Registered with our tickets and ID cards and took our swags :) There were many people at this event. Some of them were new to web3 but had development skills :)

ETHGlobal Cafe & ETHGlobal Hackathon Swags(on the right)

After the cafe event, we decided to keep our team as two. We convinced ourselves to continue on what we do best. It was story-telling, and marketing (Stories as crucial on the product side.).

We worked on our project mainly on Figma and used a Boilerplate.

A lot of side events were held during hacking like workshops, discussions with partners, mentor feedback sessions, serving foods(some people call it snackathon as well :)), massaging/recharging, networking, and parties. We extremely appreciated being in this community and would love to join earlier than this.

End of the 39 hours of hacking, all teams submitted their projects, and the judging session started. The judging session contains options. Hackers can only attend judging to be finalists, attend both to be finalists and take partner prizes or attend judging only to take partner prizes.

In our project, we attend both judging to gain more experience in the process.

From my experience, after the ETHGlobal Lisbon hackathon, hackathons are not only for developers. This environment is open to all people who would like to collaborate and contribute.