“Creativity on the Volga”: how to make a hackathon for 1000 people in two months and what to be focused on

On August 19 and 20, Samara hosted the first hackathon for the development of creative industries. It was invented, organized and carried out by us, LLС Mandarinfox, together with our partners: REC Consulting Company and the Stankozavod creative cluster. For what purpose? Fair question! In this article, we talk about the tasks in order, how we managed to do it and what lessons we learned.

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By Mandarinfox

Please, mind the Russian tranlation is automatic and may be incorrect. For original text in Russian visit this page.

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How did we come up with it?

The idea of a hackathon is not new, it’s a popular business request and we wanted to have such case in our portfolio. Personnel shortage is everywhere, as well as the desire to understand who you are hiring, what the candidate is really capable of.

Hackathon, as a team competition, allows not only to evaluate hard skills, but also to understand whether it is comfortable to work with a person in general.

It was also important for us because since 2022, Ekaterina Liseycheva, CEO of Mandarinfox, has been developing the event department of the Stankozavod creative cluster, and we wanted to show the potential of this site not only for parties and DJ sets, but also for large educational projects.

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Pitching. Photographer Olya Zharkova

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Concept

In developing the concept, we did not go far from the site and our own expertise. Stankozavod is a creative cluster, and Mandarinfox is an event agency that employs creative people. Our partners, REC consulting company, are restoring abandoned factories and rebuilding them into creative clusters. We know everything about the problems within the industry and we understand the tracks we needed for the hackathon.

We chose five:

• “Technologies”: development of the concept of a site or application for interaction between creative clusters, their residents and guests;

• “Education”: development of the concept of an educational program or series of programs in the field of creative entrepreneurship, which will be linked to existing creative clusters;

• “Concept”: to develop the concept of a souvenir shop originally from Samara, where craft producers can sell their goods;

• “Community”: a project of a living community of creative industries and the mechanics of its development in the Samara region;

• “Tourism”: to offer a specific solution or a package of solutions to attract tourists to the region, including using creative cluster sites.

Only the track “Technologies” required a clear specialisation, the rest allowed the participation of non-professionals in this area, but understanding the problems and ready to offer a solution.

We accepted applications both from teams and people with extensive experience in working and participating in hackathons, as well as from students who just wanted to try themselves in this. At first we thought that mixing different levels of competencies would be useful, but, looking ahead, we will say that it is better not to do this.

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Teamwork. Photographer Olya Zharkova

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How many people?

In order for the competition to take place and the cases to be diverse, we made five teams of five people in each track. There were 125 hackathon participants in total. There are also five winners, respectively: one in each track. In addition, we had 400+ guests of the lecture hall, 400+ people on the roof of the Stankozavod and visitors to the creative cluster in the yard and other sites who participated in partner activities.

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More than money

A small disclaimer about finances and the prize. “Creativity on the Volga” was made by REC and Mandarinfox initially at our own expense, and the prize fund of a million or more rubles was beyond our power, given the overall costs. But we wanted to encourage the participants, including financially, so each winning team received 50,000 rubles. In addition, we made merch and gifts for all participants, and our partners also contributed in it.

“Vkusvill” gave us healthy habit trackers and snack bars, “Morda Dovolna” gave pens, “Polyana Delivery” gave snacks and water. “Netology” joined the packages of winners and presented board games, and the restaurant “Gde Nas Net” presented certificates for dinner for the team.

In addition to all these things, there was also enthusiasm, the joy of victory, teamwork, meetings with professionals and an expert assessment of your work, new acquaintances and memories of the hot Samara summer that will remain forever.

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Hackathon participants. Photographer Dasha Grigorevskaya

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Timing and implementation

In general, we had 15 people in the team (half in Moscow, half in Samara), two designers, one PR manager, one project manager, big plans and two months for everything.

Of course, we have experience of organizing educational events. For example, at the beginning of the year, together with Phoenix Education, we organised the Generium All-Russian Biotechnology Case Championship. But there we were responsible only for the event part, without the methodological one. The hackathon that we came up with had no examples, it just had to be done.

Partners were adding slowly and carefully, at the start, few of them believed in this idea, most joined when the first results were achieved. We set ourselves fairly tight and short deadlines, constantly throwing and changing ideas, expanding and digging deeper, rewriting and redoing to the last.

For example, two days before the opening of the hackathon, the case evaluation system was completely changed, not because it was bad, but because after a briefing with the jury, we understood how to do it in a different way. When you are your own customer, the bar can be raised endlessly.

So, in stages:

On July 6th, the hackathon did not have a website. On July 12th, it was already published and made entirely by the Mandarinfox team, without the involvement of contractors. On July 13th, the first post in the hackathon channel in telegram. By the end of the month, there were already 200 people in it. In early July, there was no hackathon and no one knew about it. By August 19, “Creativity on the Volga” became a query in search engines.

For us, this is an experience of how to make a major educational event from scratch, with our own money, in a short time and close all the blocks with the help of the team.

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Hackathon organising team. Photographer Dasha Grigorevskaya

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Jury

To evaluate the cases, we invited creative economy experts to Samara. Those who change entire cities for the better and understand how to develop themselves in the creative industries. We have an expert team of 35 people:

Pavel Rogovoy (Velogorod.Online), Andrey Malevanik (Netology), Anton Gorovoy (Megabudka), Tatyana Novoselova (Shaninka), Alexander Krasavtsev (Polis Institute), Mike Barkov (Optimax Dev) Alexander Averin (ANO “Agency for Creative Industries”)

Ruslan Goncharov (ONY Digital), Georgy Lobushkin (ex-VK), Nikolay Nikulnikov (WEBROVER), Oleg Veys (Agency for Socio-Cultural Technologies) and others.

Most of the jury members were not from Samara, so we organised business trips for everyone with accommodation and a cultural program.

Entrepreneurs from Samara also took part: Vasily Rumyantsev and Andrey Komzov, the founders of the Volga Mama merch brand, Ekaterina Revinskaya, the author of the project of non-standard excursions “Resort City“, Andrey Ivanov from the Korzh coffee house, Pavel Novikov, manager of Stankozavod, Nikita Petukhov, director of the tourist information center of the Samara region Anna Pavkina.

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Hackathon experts on the roof of Stankozavod. Photographer Dasha Grigorevskaya

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Lecture hall

When you call and organize business trips for so many cool people, it will be useful to broadcast their knowledge to the people. Therefore, in the Lobby of the Stankozavod, lectures about city marketing and everyday creativity were going on for two days. The industrial look of the site ideologically reinforced the themes of development and change, and the Samara street artist Art Abstraktov drew graffiti “Creativity on the Volga” on the background.

Rashit Kalimullin talked about how to use AI in 2023, Anton Gorovoy showed selected cases of the Megabudka architect bureau and told how they rethink traditional Russian architecture, with Alexander Krasavtsev we discussed the mechanics that can be used to involve people in the development of urban and rural environments, Roman Zolin showed how cities sell themselves to the traveler, and Ruslan Goncharov answered questions about the work of a successful branding agency.

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Where to focus?

First of all, on a clear distribution of responsibility in a regime of constant change. We understand that everyone does things differently and it was possible to simplify the concept and limit ourselves to just a hackathon, but this was not our story. In “Creativity on the Volga” big project scale was built from the beginning, and as the project developed, it only grew. In this regard, the organizational structure included many volume blocks: participants, experts, partners, marketing and PR, volunteers, design and merch, a program for several sites and a legal block.

Here it is important to synchronise, understand how far we are from the original idea, constantly assess the risks that arise as the project grows, share tasks and trust the team.

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An abandoned cinema in Detroit US. Photo by BirdInFlight (by artists Jennifer Garza-Cuen)

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