A reflection on participating in the 2023 Fund Public Goods Digital Hackathon hosted by Funding the Commons that began August 11 with final judging on September 9th.

What we did:

We participated in the Fund Public Goods Hackathon as an Intro Hackathon Tier Sponsorship allowing us to host virtual workshop, post on the hackathon event website, and offer hackathon prizes.

1. Bruxa: Coordinate all communications, managing prizes, utilizing NDAO resources, troubleshooting issues, and serving as the face of NDAO throughout the hackathon.

2. Vishal: Represented Growth/Relations during our digital office hours, engaging with participants and fostering relationships.

3. Ricardo: Represented .tech during digital office hours, offering direct support to developers in attendance and providing in-depth insights into the technology when necessary.

We developed a hackathon toolkit to assist digital hackers worldwide. Additionally, we curated two distinct challenges, each with its own set of prizes, and conducted digital office hours workshop for the FTC developer community. We pulled footage from the workshop we did to add to our new video database of ‘About Endaoment’ clips, with support from Luciana at Wachsman Digital.

Our hypothesis:

We were the sole sponsor in attendance at the kickoff event, which provided us with a valuable platform to introduce ourselves, showcase our products, and present our prizes. During the event, we made promising connections with potential partners, with two individuals in particular standing out as candidates for our grant program. While we received two real project submissions, neither quite met the standards required to qualify for prize money. Although both projects were intriguing, they lacked the necessary depth for seamless integration into our application. Additionally, we discovered there was some confusion surrounding the hackathon, as many developers expressed interest in an in-person hacker house instead of the digital hackathon. This confusion may have led to less active participation than expected coming in.

What was challenging:

Unfortunately, this format made it easier for scammers to almost outnumber the legitimate projects submitted. Moreover, a significant number of individuals working on our challenges did not translate into projects submitted for evaluation.

While FTC boasts a robust in-person community, the transition to a digital event presented some challenges. We received minimal social media support and engagement with sponsors. Furthermore, the duration of the hackathon underwent multiple changes, ultimately being shortened by two weeks.

What did we learn?

The FTC possesses a stronger community in real life, but that does not always translate to digital engagement. Our cash prizes garnered less attention online than larger cash prizes, possibly due to the limited timeframe. Many other communities did not grant out their prize money, so we were also not alone in this decision. This experience underscores the need for a more robust case in favor of fostering quality developer engagement over quantity, which aligns with our vision for an improved grant program structure.