I highly encourage you to participate in a half-hackathon ([[Hackathons and AI - a new paradigm]]), and then organize one yourself. Why this is worth it: - First, selfishly, organizing an event like this is a pretext to meet top people, invited as jury. Invite people you admire to join, network and be the nexus of innovation and dynamism in your city. Organizing recurring IRL events is a huge underrated hack to gain visibility in your domain. - Many types of organizations can benefit from organizing or sponsoring half-hackathons: tech companies, early VCs, incubators, hiring companies, think tanks, research labs. Big corporations can boost their employer brand and employee retention too. Hackathons are an easy opportunity to get in touch with all of them. - Third, and for the broader benefit of society, organizing hackathons is a beautiful way to encourage talented people to build amazing ideas, meet friends, make lasting relationships and give others energy. These events can help others find movement and meaning in their lives again. Finally, organizing an event might seem daunting, but I've done some of the boring work for you. I'm working on a "playbook", in a [GPT format you can easily follow](https://chatgpt.com/g/g-6889c66e267881919f22349a262789fc-half-hackathon-organizer). It guides you step by step with the decision making, the ops, the assets to generate, etc to organize your own half-hackathon. The GPT is linked to an [open repo](https://github.com/supercreative-ben/half-hackathons/tree/main) with lists of venues and sponsors you can contact for every city. Anyone can contribute to these lists. My hope is that that it gets much easier to organize these short hackathons without prior experience of event management. For starting out, don't wait for other's permissions. You don't *need* a big venue, sponsors, jury, prizes. You can have people come to your place, to a large public space. Be scrappy. What matters is having smart people eager to build a project together - with their computers and wifi. Want to get to the next level? it's time to be more ambitious. First, as a marketing play: Define a bolder theme. Find a crazy venue (a castle, a train, a boat). Create a punchy 60 seconds trailer video to get top participants in. Invite leading entrepreneurs, investors and researchers. Frame your hackathon as a top collab "Mistral x LVMH". Send emails and get intros to get a large pool prize. Edit a post-video like it was a TV show. You name it. Second, and more profoundly, try to have the smartest/dynamic people come and build something. Find these technical people anywhere you can.