The people who are at these hackathons are the perfect sort of like test user.

I'm joined today by Carter who leads DevRel at Langflo. I met Carter at a hackathon he organized and it was absolutely brilliant. So I wanted to get him on to learn about why you should do a hackathon, if you should, and how to do it well.

You can do these on a shoestring for sure. You work up the ladder and you can offer more and more and more. So long as your fundamental motivation for creating this experience is to serve your community, then I think honestly, like anybody can do it. There is no substitute for having a team of engineers trying to use your tool and being there in person to, like, understand what they're running into. You're gonna get a lot of, like, high quality product feedback.

My first exposure to to hackathons was when I got into developer relations. So, you know, I've I've been a a lifelong programmer and engineer. I've had a lot of different jobs over my career. But I got into DevRel in 2012, and that was right around the time that there was kind of an explosion in API companies. Right?

There's there's sort of, like, this API ecosystem People might remember so I worked at a company called Twilio, which is still around. There were companies like Mashery, and there there's this this whole sort of sea change in how developers thought about building applications. And it was built on top of the idea of these cloud based APIs that you could sort of treat like Legos. And and you could build amazing experiences and amazing applications by combining Twilio with Stripe with something else. And and I and I feel like hack athons, at least like modern hackathons, like the hackathons that maybe you that I'm familiar with and that you kind of participated in, like, I think those really did start, like, around 2011, 2012.

And I think that they they started because one of the things that hackathon hackathons are great at is, like, helping developers get out of their job and get out of their sort of, like, fixed mindsets about, like, what what they work on for a living and be more creative and engage in a form of play. Right? And these APIs were perfect for that. If you think about engineering before APIs, like, I don't know, like building Windows apps or, you know, whatever it was that happened back in the eighties or early nineties, like, what did it mean to build software? Well, it meant that you had to have, like, a pretty heavy duty IDE, like, you know, like, Visual Studio or something, and you you had to maybe get your hands on some pretty powerful SDKs, that you would also have to download or get on a CD if you wanted to build, like, an app or a game.

It was just like it was really heavyweight. And in the era of stealth service, like, free sign up cloud APIs, you could get developers in a room, give them you know, have them sign up for a bunch of free accounts, maybe give them some free API keys, point them at some documentation, and, and then unleash them. And sort of, like, let them be creative for the next twenty four to forty eight hours and and incentivize them. Right? You know, give them you know, dangle some prizes, you know, create a little bit of competitive, you know, dynamics, and and see what they create.

And and I I that's kind of what happened. Like, I just saw this was a really, you know, like, rich era of, of people creating, these hackathon events. And I think I think the the the why behind it was, like, this confluence of two things. Right? You had a bunch of API companies that were, looking to drive more awareness about their offerings.

You know, Twil at the at the time, you know, Twilio is a small company. Stripe's a small company. Like, they're not not developers are not, like, sufficiently aware that these that these products and solutions exist. And then from the perspective of the developers, this it was just sort of an opportunity to, you know, to to get away from their job for a weekend and engage in a creative endeavor.

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How it's designed is that you can start as early as day zero. But for us, it wasn't day zero. It was closer to when we first started monetizing because we didn't have a sign up at all. People could just anonymously use our tool. So it was a little later, coincided with when we wanted to start monetizing and, like, we needed a nice enterprise feature set.

If you're open source and you're doing enterprise first, the minute you think about monetization is when you should think about Work OS. To be honest, if we do that again, I think we'd think about that on day zero, to be honest, because, like, we should have done it on day zero ideally. Anonymous usage should be permitted, but you should know who's using your tool. It should be optional, 100%. It should be opt in, 100%.

But it'd be great to have auth from day zero. You don't necessarily think about these enterprise features, but they still lead revenue, and it kinda is a no brainer in that sense. So, yeah, I highly recommend.

What I've heard is some people are like, we don't do any like in person events. Like, we just, you know, we spend that we invest our money into like content and we reach like way more people than we would ever reach in like in person. And I I've heard a lot of companies say that. What what do you think is the kind of, like, the way that someone should think about it or, like, the whys that people would yeah.

Yeah. The framework that I use for thinking about hackathons is the framework that I use for thinking about developer relations in general. Right? So first of all, like, step one, like, if a if the idea for participating in a hackathon is purely coming out of a marketing team or organization at a company, like, there's some something something is wrong. Right?

Like, hack like, I I know that I mentioned that hackathons are great for driving awareness, but there are a bunch of other things that are incredibly important, and there are significantly cheaper ways that you can that you can drive awareness. Right? So the way that I think about developer relations is that, fundamentally, the function of developer relations is is to serve developers, to to sort of, like, help them be successful. And sometimes that that means being successful, like, with your company's product, and sometimes it's being successful without your company's product. Right?

But there's there's a a high degree of service oriented attitudes that are embedded in a lot of developer relations professionals. And there's a lot of empathy that comes from from working in developer relations. So so when I when I take a step back and I think about, oh, like, how can how can a hackathon help us serve developers? There's a few things that we can do. So one is awareness.

I know marketing has kind of a bad I don't know. It leaves a bad taste in a lot of engineers' mouths. There's sort of a there's a trope that if you build a really amazing tool, you don't need to do any marketing. Like, people will just sort of magically find it. I I think that that isn't true.

There are perhaps some examples of that working. I think for the most part, that's not true. I think that if you if you work on a developer tool that you authentically believe is of use to some subset of developers for some subset of use cases. If you don't do something beyond simply, like, launching it, you know, to the Internet to, like, make people aware that it exists, you're not serving them. Right?

I mean, someone at some point figured out that you could use Twilio to power two factor authentication. I assure you, like, two factor authentication was not something that was, like, in somebody's brain at Twilio. Right? Like, there was no thought process like, oh, yeah. Like, this is great for two of two two FA and TFA, and, you know, we should actually launch our own TFA product.

Like, that's not true. Like, Twilio did one thing, and it did it well. It was Allego. Some really smart people used the Allego to create a two factor authentication product, well, to create many of them. One of those two factor authentication products was a startup called Authy, and Twilio ended up acquiring Authy, you know, I don't know, several years, after they launched.

So but once again, like, how did the Authy founder, like, first even understand that you could programmatically send and receive text messages? Like, how did this happen? So I I think, like, connecting developers Yeah. To these solutions is important. But beyond that, like, what else what else happens?

Like, one thing that I I don't know how much you saw this at hacking hacking agents. There's, like, a tremendous product feedback loop Yeah. That happens at these events. Right? You there is no substitute for, having a team of engineers, at an event.

So I I was there, and, several of, my my team was there. And sort of sitting shoulder to shoulder with developers who are trying to build something. And they're trying to use your tool, and they're experiencing some friction. Right? And being there in person to, like, understand what they're running into and what's blocking them and what's slowing them down.

Because the thing is, like, the people who are at these hackathons are the perfect the perfect sort of, like, test user. Right?

Early adopters.

Well, they're just sort of it's not it's not just that they're early adopters. Like, they're they're they're motive they're they're motivated. They they're they're open minded. There there are a lot of characteristics about these people that actually make them, make them perfect because the truth is none of them really want to come ask you for help. Right?

Most of them feel like, hey. Just point me to the docs and, you know, and then I'll see you in forty eight hours when I show you what I've built. Right? So these people yeah. Like, they're they're they're they're motivated.

They're they're most of them are experienced. And so when they come to you, with, with issues, like, need to listen. You're like, wow. Like, these like, despite all the information that we gave them, upfront, you know, hey. Here's a link to the docs.

Here's a link to this. Here's, you know, here's you know, literally a tutorial. Like, we we we sort of seed people with the the best, content that we have for getting started. When they run into issues, it's it's generally like an issue with our product, right, or an issue with the experience. Another thing that I think people misunderstand about dev tools, like, the product isn't just the zeros and ones that you ship to the cloud.

Right? Like, the like, the docs to me, like, the docs are part of the product. The tutorials are part of the product. The sign up experience is, like, this core part of the product. Right?

So when you have kind of a, you know, a more comprehensive definition of what the product is, you're gonna get a lot of, like, high quality product feedback that we document and then we turn around and provide to the product and engineering

Yeah. You to to get that equivalent amount of, like, feedback would be so hard in a kind of traditional sense. And you're only gonna get like a snapshot. You're not gonna get someone like sat down building with for like twelve hours. I know there's like user research companies, but I feel like it's usually like an hour or two that someone just tries out your product and it's just

It's it's maybe it's it's kinda it's almost worse than that. Right? I mean, the those things are incredibly expensive. Like, if you talk to people who have who have sort of done, like, user research panels, it's very expensive. Like, to to sort of, like, you know, get the people lined up.

It's like time it's expensive time wise, and sometimes it's expensive monetarily. Like, it and it's and you're right. It's kind of this artificial, like, one hour window. Like, hey. Sit down and, you know, complete this task.

And then, like, you know, people are scribbling on, like, no notepads, like, how long it took the person to complete the task. Like, you're you're just missing, a lot of, a lot of nuance, and you're you're having them operate in kind of an artificial environment, as opposed to real life. Right? So forget about hackathons. Right?

Like, the, the ideal, like, the ideal for for every developer tool, you know, founder who's listening, like, what's the ideal experience? Right? The ideal experience is that for some reason, someone visits your website. They word-of-mouth, you know, something smart that you did on Hacker News. Like, they come to your website.

Right? And the the the happy path is that they almost instantly understand the problems that you're solving and how your tool works, and they kind of, like, almost instantly self select into, like, yes. This is for me. And then they they they sign up for free for some kind of limited trial. They onboard relatively painlessly.

And, really, like, the the the truth is, like, you never hear from them. Right? They just they they happily integrate your tool into what they're building, and then over time, they grow and grow and grow, and eventually they become a paying customer. And and you just you never you simply never hear from them because you've done everything perfectly. Now this is not real.

Like, this doesn't actually happen in real life, but this is this is this is this is the happy path. This is what you well, but this is what you iterate towards. Right? I mean, like, this doesn't exist, when you launch your product, but you iterate towards it. Right?

So it's just it's this is it's this iterative journey you're on to reducing the time to value, reducing the number of support tickets, you know, just reducing their friction so that eventually, like, you really do have the majority of your developers kind of coming into this experience and almost instantly, you know, being successful. Right? But it's a but but hackathons are just a tremendous accelerant for that kind of stuff. Like, there's almost everything that we'll talk about that happens at a hackathon. You can imagine other, like, vectors for achieving the same goal.

I think what's useful about the hackathon is that it all kinda gets rolled up into this one experience that, you know, once again, like, happens over the course of the weekend and is and is relatively inexpensive. Another thing that that happens at a hackathon is that you end up sort of having really great engagement with local developer communities. Right? So so think so think about so at Hacking Agents, which took place in London about a month ago sorry. Not sure when this podcast will go out.

But

Yeah. Summertime.

You know? Yeah. Sometime. Right? But, you know, I worked with with AI tinkerers, which is, at this point, kind of a global community of AI developers, but they have, like, a really vibrant chapter in in London that's actually organized by by Lou Carries, which is a great guy.

You you had you had him on on your podcast. And, you know, we worked we and and if if there if it wasn't for this hackathon, I I don't know that we would've come in contact that I would've come in contact with AI tinkerers or come into contact with Luke. Right? And I think that a lot of what how I think about DevRel is about engaging authentically, with developers, engaging with the communities that those developers belong to, and and seeing how we can help. Right?

Like, how can we serve these developers? How can we serve these communities? How can we work together on things? Like, I'm positive that, like, we'll end up doing, some really fun and interesting things with AI tinkerers moving forward. But the but this hackathon happened to be, like, a really great opportunity to to make the introduction and and to kind of make the build the connection.

I guess you just get such a good over the weekends, like, you're there for a long time. It's like a real connection rather than just like, oh, you know, you got introduced over email and, like, you kind of barely remember their name or whatever. It's like, it's a real

Yeah.

It's a depth of connection.

Well, everyone who's there is a software is a professional software engineer. Right? And there's a lot of both excitement and anxiety about AI. Right? So first, like, let's talk about what's new.

Like, what, you know, what what what are the latest models that have shipped and what's different about them and and, like, what can you do with them. Right? And that's really important. Right? Because if you're a professional software engineer, like, you increasingly have to understand these things.

Like, the more that you don't understand these things, the more you don't understand how AI works or what's new, the more you're in jeopardy, in terms of, in terms of, like, your relevance in this field. Right? And then second and secondly, you want to connect with your peers. Right? You wanna for all kinds of reasons, you know, for, you know, for yeah, just a lot of there's a lot of reasons that people network.

Like, sometimes it's about looking for a new job. Sometimes it's about looking for cofounders. Sometimes it's just about, you know, sharing information and sharing experiences. But AI tinkerers is those two pillars are something that I see come up in their events over and over again. And then sort of bringing this back to the to hacking agents and the hackathon, like, we help them do that.

Right? So there's sort of a just a practical sort of, like, benefit. It sort of it provide it provides some leverage. But, frankly, like, when I like, almost almost all the time when I when I talk to the people who lead these communities, you can almost think of them as, like, super super developers in in a sense that they have spent so much time talking to people like me and and, like, evaluating tools in the AI space that they've just developed, like, a real an incredibly, like, keen sense of, like, you know, what's what's a good tool for in the AI space, what's a bad tool. So even just getting to know these people and talking to them, they the kind of feedback and and the kind of sort of thoughts that that you can get from them is is incredibly valuable.

Right? Because not only are they really, really smart about the AI tooling space, they're also they're they're I I don't wanna say that they represent how their community feels, but people that are good community organizers are, like, in touch with the members of their community. Right? Right? Like, they're sort of they they talk to them.

They kind of understand what their concerns are or their or their their needs are. And so the people who who lead these communities are just fantastic folks to talk to. Like, they're just really, really smart about the kind of problems that developers are facing, the obstacles that they're dealing with. And that can just be really, really useful when you're trying to build tools that are that unblock developers or, like, give them new capabilities that they didn't have before.

Yeah. Yeah. That that makes sense. So just almost imagining Swix while you talk about this first sort of a, like, slight the kind of, like, embodiment of of that.

I can tell you a fun a fun story. This is one of I mean, I've I've I've lost track of the number of hackathons that I've been to. But one of the first ones that's, like, burned into my brain, I'm assuming you're familiar with Firebase?

Yeah. I used to use that a lot, actually.

Fantastic. I mean, for folks that are listening that don't know what it is, just just Google it. It's a it's an amazing an amazing tool. But back in 2012, when I worked at Twilio, we sponsored a hackathon called Angel Hack, and they had a San Francisco event that was really, really well run. But I'll just never forget this.

There was a small team from a startup, like an an unknown startup at the time called Firebase. And there was this guy yeah. Sure. I mean, you go you go but look, man. Go back far enough and, like, every startup is unknown.

Right? Like, once upon a time, no one knew what Stripe was. And so, like, yeah, they were they had, like, just just come out of YC, and they had, like, just basically basically launched. I'd never heard of them. And their wonder founder is James Tamplin, went up on stage, and every, every vendor, every sponsor is given, like, a five minute window to get up on stage and demo their dev tool.

James just absolutely blew everybody away. Like, I was I was dumbfounded by what I saw. Now I'm sure people just take all this real time web stuff for granted. But at the time, it was completely novel, completely new, and it was just staggering. Like and I swear to god, like, every team at that event used Firebase Yeah.

Because it just like it

was something like you change it on this tab and then like it's like you you change a field in this and then it's like synchronized and yeah.

I I honestly wish I could remember the details. It might have even been better than that. Like, might have been one of those things where I'm sorry, James, if you're listening and I'm wrong about this, but but I I think it might have been something where he asked everyone to take out their phone and, like, just go to a URL. And then, like, on their on their phone, there was some kind of action they could take. And then he was in a position to, like, show off a dashboard of some kind where, like, in real time, as people are clicking or doing things, it's all it's all being represented.

Right? And it was just, like, magical. It's just like and and also, it's not magic where it's black box magic. Like, he showed the code. Right?

Yeah. Firebase did not invent WebSockets. Right? So, like, this is the classic thing where, like, people on Hacker News are like, I don't understand why people care about Dropbox. Like, can't you just build this using secure FTP and some scripts?

It's just like Firebase didn't invent WebSockets, but they invented a they wrapped WebSockets in a developer experience that was so, like, clever and so amazing that, like, the minute you saw it, you're like, this is exactly how I wanna write code. And and it was it was just quite magical. For me, like, that's, like, this perfect, like, company story where, like, yeah, like, the this small startup, drove some awareness, probably got some great product feedback, during the event, was able to sort of, like, engage with the community in San Francisco. And then the developers, like, they they learned they learned a new tool that, like, helped them, like, you know, on you know, in their journey of being, like, a professional software engineer.

Yeah. Is it like do you think like hackathons are most useful at the kind of like earlier stage while you're still refining the product? Or do do you think there's like it's like always similar amounts of utility?

No. I think they're they're they're you know, it's it's like it's I love how you framed it. You can because you can be too early. So here's here's some anti patterns. Do not use hackathons as QA.

Right? Like, you know, like, if you're if you're too early You're right. I mean

Yeah. Yeah.

It's just If you're too early Yeah. If you're too if you're too early and you haven't really you know, your docs are not very good or you you know you know your platform is buggy, like, don't go to Hackathon Yeah. Because you will do more harm than good. You will spend though you'll spend time and money teaching developers that your platform is not reliable or is, you know, or just doesn't work great. Am sure that you'll

friend that went to a hackathon and I was gonna go with him by playing Flake. And I texted him and I was like, how was it? And he was like, oh, dude. It was I can't remember what the tool was called, but it was like, it was just the tool was rubbish. Like, it didn't work.

Like, it didn't do any of the stuff it said it was gonna do. And I was like, oh, okay.

So that's like the does that that's the too early example. And then like, yeah, sure. There's a two there's plenty of two late I mean, look. If you're a I don't know. If you're the if you're the business owner for, like, s three, like, AWS s three, like, yeah, I mean, I guess you could spend time and money, you know, going to a hackathon, but good lord.

I mean, your, you know, your product is, like, as as fully baked as humanly possible. Like, anyone like, I mean, like, everybody has heard of s three. I mean, like like, when we we just go these, you know, go through, you know, awareness, product feedback, can be I mean, I guess you could argue there's some degree of community engagement, but, like, for what purpose? Yeah. Yeah.

I think I think there's definitely this sort of like a a too a too late story.

You wanna go to hackathons with your kind of like Goldilocks product where it's like not too early, not too late, and just just right where you can learn some stuff, but it does still work.

Yeah. It makes sense. I think I think I think the Goldilocks thing, it's also like it's a pretty it's like a it's like a fad bell curve. Right? Like, you don't like, there's if you think imagine, like, a a bell curve like this.

Yeah.

Yeah. Right? I I think most products that are kind of in that 80%, like, you you you can get a lot of value out of a hackathon. It's just like it's just sort of like those those those two earlies and, like, two two lates on on the edges. You know?

Don't don't waste your time. The the other thing I would say is that these these are low cost experiments. Right? You know? If you're a founder and you're just not sure, I mean, bias for action.

Right? I mean, it's you know, like, you should I mean, you you you should you should apply reasonable amounts of judgment for anything that you do, but, you know, bias for action. Right? You know, don't don't don't set too too high a bar for yourself. You know, you you can do you can do reasonable amounts of, like, internal testing with both your product and your docs to kinda, like, get a get a feel.

Like, think of it like this. Right? Like, if you if you wouldn't launch your product on Product Hunt or Hacker News, well, then sure. Like, don't don't spend the time and the money on a hackathon. But if you would, I mean, if you've already, you know, if you have already, you know, launched your product on these, like, large scale, you know, distribution platforms, oh, well, then you should certainly go to a hackathon.

If someone is running a hackathon, have you got any things that they should worry about and things they shouldn't worry about, that sort of thing?

The developer events that I like to go to and once again, this is not specific to hackathons, but the developer events that I like to go to are the ones that are are run by people who are developers. Because I think that those people have tremendous empathy and understanding for developers. Well, I mean, first of all, you know, there's there's sort of the basic event stuff that we don't need to spend too much time on. Right? Like, you're gonna need to have a venue.

If your event is happening in the summer, you should look for one that has AC. We

Good luck.

Good luck. I know. Yeah. We we learned that the hard way, in, in Shoreditch, a month ago or so. But, but, I mean, all all kidding aside, you wanna you wanna find a venue, and you wanna find a venue that has, good Wi Fi, and you wanna find a venue that has lots of lots of plugs.

Right? And once again, like, this is this is stuff that people can just forget. But, you know, look. You know, every single one of these people is gonna have a laptop. Right?

You know, they're they're they're gonna wanna download things. They're gonna wanna PIP install things. Right? So you're gonna need to have need to have good Wi Fi, good good bandwidth. And for something that's taking place over the course of twenty four or forty eight hours, you're gonna they're gonna wanna plug in their laptops.

Right? So there's a bunch of sort of basic basic basic venue bits that you need. The the the next ingredient is is is sort of like like partners. I was gonna use the word sponsor. I mean, sure.

Like, you know, you but you're you really like, you're gonna need to find a set of companies that you can partner with that are gonna provide the people who are coming with, like, interesting tools for them to play with. Right? Yep. So we've done on the Lengthlow team, we've done three hackathons over the past, like, four to five months. The first one was in San Francisco.

The second one was in New York City, and the the most recent one was in London. And we worked really hard to, like, think about, like, who we wanna work with to kind of give developers interesting things to play with. If you think of dev tools or LEGOs, like, you've gotta give developers a bunch of interesting LEGOs that they can plug together to build interesting things. Right? And then, I mean, honestly, like, the the the the third thing is you you need the people.

Right? I mean, I think a lot of some people are gonna show up, and they're gonna solo code, which is totally fine. But a lot of people are gonna show up, and they're gonna wanna they're gonna wanna meet other people. They're gonna wanna join teams. They're gonna you're gonna have people with different skill sets.

You're gonna have people that are, like, really great back end developers and some people that are, like, awesome on the front end. And you're gonna wanna find ways to plug these people together so that so that together, they can build really interesting things. And you're gonna you know? So you're gonna have to work with you're gonna have to figure out, like, how do we how do we promote the event? How do we spread the word?

How do we work with local communities to sort of, like, promote the event? You you know, events require you know, you're looking for, like, an energetic fun event. Right? Like, with hacking agents, like, one of my overriding concerns was that, like, even though we had prizes, like, I wanted everyone who left the event to feel like, wow. I had so much fun.

This is so amazing. Like, I I can't wait for this to happen again. Right? Like, that's the that's the emotional feeling that I wanted people to leave with. And you you really want people to feel like they're participating in, like, a large, like, vibrant fun event.

Right? It's like you don't wanna go to a bar that's empty. Right? You don't wanna go to a concert that's empty. You don't wanna go to a hackathon that's empty, even even if it meant that, like, by default, you would win all the prizes.

So as an organizer, as a prospective organizer, like, make sure you have, like, a promotional plan that that makes sense and that helps you reach the kind of developers that you're trying to reach.

Do you remember what kind of promotional stuff you did for hacking agents?

So a lot of it was, you know, a lot of it was just sort of what you might think of as organic. Right? Like, DataStax has has a cuss had we have customers, and we were able to email them and promote the event. Mhmm. Working with communities like AI tinkerers, they were able to help us promote the event.

So there's a bunch of stuff that you can do that I would sort of think of as organic. And I think we did a little bit of, like, paid advertising to to promote the event too, but it was, like, very low cost in the grand scheme of things. So and it and it and it kinda worked out. Right? Like, I think the the venue that we had, I think, like, totally, like, maxed out at a 150 people, like, if we filled every single chair.

And I think we ended up with, like, a little over, like, a 130, 135 people. Wow. So That's so many. Yeah. It all kinda it all it all kinda it all kinda worked out.

But but but sincerely, like, these are these are very like, these are relatively low cost executions. When we talk about, like, sponsoring larger events, you know, like sponsoring, like, a big conference or something, the cost of sponsoring sponsoring any kind of conference can run anywhere from, like, 15 to to, like, a $100,000 or more. Right? It seems like there's a really it it can be it can be incredibly expensive to to to sponsor large events, and it's it does it doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. Right?

But it can just be very expensive. I think, you know, running either running or participating in hackathons is, like, an order of magnitude less expensive. So, like, it's a really so the ROI on it is is really high. Like, to to run a hackathon soup to nuts, like, you should probably budget anywhere from, like, 5,000 to $25,000. Right?

And and I'm I'm giving you, like, a broad range because it it just depends. Right? Like, can you Yeah. Can you get a venue for free? Right?

Cloudflare hosted our event in San Francisco for free. Yeah. Digital is for the

Biggest cost, I guess, usually.

It it can be. Catering catering is catering catering is a is a is a solid second. Right? So, like, what are the costs? I mean, like, the the you can you can spend, like, an unlimited amount of money on these things, but fundamentally, like, you need to have a venue.

You need to and you need to have catering, and you probably wanna have prizes. Right? Like, that's sort of like and then, like, you you might spend you might splurge on on a better AV setup or, you know, a camera crew for, you know, to capture some, like, marketing

wild camera crew. Right? That was like a real pro setup.

Well, we did. But, like, I I think that, like, honestly, we we we didn't do that for the first two events. So we didn't have a camera crew for the San Francisco or the New York event. And I I decided that it was it was worth it to spend a little bit of money to have a crew for the third event because we wanna do more of these things. Right?

Like, we wanted we wanna do more like, I don't I wanna do many more of these events, like, in other markets that we haven't served yet. And, you know, and and we just wanna come we don't we wanna come back to London and San Francisco and New York. So yeah. So this so we wanna we wanna make sure that, like, when a developer is asking themselves the question, like, jeez, am I really gonna spend my weekend doing this instead of being with my friends or being with my family? It's really useful to, like, have some some videos.

Yeah. Just to have a picture. Right? You know? I I know

What can you expect?

Yeah. A picture is worth a thousand words, and I guess, like, a video is worth a million. I mean, you just you wanna Yeah. I think, like, when we talk about, like, what once again, like, you know, the the whole like, how you how can you tell if an event is gonna be a good event or a bad event? Like, I just have this I just continue to have this heuristic about, like, who's running it.

And I think that the people who are running it for the right reasons are going to they're gonna have a really great venue, and they're gonna do a really great job of attracting the right people. And they're gonna have good they're gonna have good food, and they're gonna have good coffee. And they're just gonna create a really vibrant, fun experience. And you wanna capture that, in photos and in videos so that you can show it to people so that they can they can kinda make their own decision for for future events. You know, if you're a developer and you only get to go to one conference a year, and you, you know, you haven't had the benefit of talking to you know, of getting sort of word-of-mouth advice from people, oftentimes, like, you just go to a website.

You go to a website, and you're just kinda I don't know. You're looking to see who the speakers are, and and then that's all the information you have before you click the button to buy the ticket. And Yeah. You only get to you only get to go to one a year. And I hate to say this, but a lot of conferences are run by people, that put completely fictitious speakers on their websites.

Like, they just make

it up.

Oh, it's real. Especially in the AI space. Like, I've seen we have been asked to sponsor AI conferences, where I do the most basic due diligence. I go to the website. I see who's speaking, and I've reached out to I won't think I won't name them, but I've reached out to the founders of these AI startups, and I've who I know personally.

And I've asked them, like, are you speaking at this event? And the answer is like, no. Like, I've never even heard

of this event.

Yeah. Sure. It's look. It it it it it it's awful. It's truly it's truly awful, but it's like it's just sort of a buyer beware thing.

Right?

Yep. And and and so I feel like the the the visuals and stuff, all that sort of stuff is just giving much more, like, credence. This is a real thing. This is

Yeah. Worth being

the one conference or hack fun.

Or or or the one hack event. Mean, it's I just think it's I I just I understand. We we literally live in an AI era of like, I don't know, man, like like auto generated videos. I mean, I just think that, like, it's a it's worth spending the money and and the time to, like, help give people more information and give them more of a feel of what the event is like. And, also, like, I'm I'm a huge believer in, like, giving people more information, not just so that they can opt in, but so that they can opt out.

But yeah. Anyway, by getting I think you asked about, like, just in general, like, the the sort of, like, the cost structure for these things.

Like Yeah.

Yeah. You can do the you can do these on a shoestring for sure. And then as you as you sort of build a community, assuming you wanna do a second and as soon assuming you wanna do more of these things, you can bring on partners that can provide budget so that you can sort of, like, up level. Right? So you wanna the venue and the Wi Fi is, like, don't don't even venue Wi Fi plugs, that's, like, the bare minimum.

Right? Like, you can't you need it. Then, oh, can you get can you get a a sponsor? Great. Now you can have food.

Can you get another sponsor? Great. Like, now you can have prizes. Right? And you just sort of

Yeah.

You work up the ladder of of sponsors, and you can you can offer more and more and more. And I think what's super important is that so long as your fundamental motivation for creating this experience is to serve your community and you're not just sort of, like, looking to, like, start a business, then I I I think, honestly, like, it's not that hard, and and and anybody can do it. I think that my observation backwards looking is that most of the people who get into hackathons with a thought of building, like, a large scale business around it, most of them fail. And even the ones who succeed, often end up creating events that I wouldn't recommend to people. Mhmm.

And, you know, that that don't often, like, serve serve developers very well.

I was actually just thinking, like, if anyone's listening to us and wants to run a hackathon, they should, like, email me and then I can just put them in touch because, like, I'll put put them in touch with you. Should just be like a group of people that wanna like organize hackathons because it seems like Yeah. Yeah. That's why I I I just wanna go to more. There's like need more in London.

Yeah. For sure. Well, I mean, we we haven't talked about it, Jack. But jeez, I mean, we're we're kinda skipping over the fact that there was a pandemic and, like, you know, like, there used to be tons of hackathons. I think a lot of people have mixed feelings about AI, but one of the amazing things to come out of AI in the last few years is it has really reignited events.

Not just hackathons, but hackathons, meetups, conferences. Like, it's given people an overwhelming reason to, like, learn a new thing, to get together in person, and I'm really grateful for that. So I'm with you. Like, I I want there to be more hackathons in general, and I'm perfectly happy if they're AI hackathons. It doesn't matter.

I mean, I think I think almost almost every I mean, I wouldn't even know what a non AI hackathon would look like these days. Like, every I mean, what isn't AI? Right? And I think it turns it turns out, like, the the instruction manual is, like, not that complicated. You just oh, you just need to sort of find find some people that yeah.

You need to find an underserved market. Right? Like, I think, you know, I think London is being better and better served over time, but there are a lot of cities where, you know, there hasn't been a hackathon in the last twelve months. Right? So for people who live in those cities, like, you can totally do it.

And, Jack, you're you're more than welcome to to share my contact information with them.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Reach out if people wanna do bring bring, hacking agents to, their city.

Oh, actually, bring bring bring any bring anything to their city.

Bring anything to their

That's right.

Anything. Yeah. One thing I did wanna ask as well that I thought was interesting is when we were chatting, I think it was potentially over margaritas after that. Thought. But but it is actually like a real topic.

So you were talking about you had like kind of cities that you focus on, which I hadn't heard anyone say before. And I was really happy that London was one of those cities. Yeah. But could you share about, like, firstly, like, which cities you focus on and then, like, why you think of it on, a city level?

Yeah. Sure. I mean, I think different companies and, I don't know, different, you know, different startups, like, they they have an idea of, you know, who who their sort of, like, ideal customer is or who their ideal developer is. For some of those companies, like, they they focus on focus on the student audience. On the Lengtho team, we're we're focusing on professional software engineers that are either actively building AI products or, you know, or or at least AI prototypes or folks that are very, very interested in, like, in sort of getting in in figuring out how to, apply like, AI to the to the things that they're building.

So that that that's the that's the kind of person that we're trying to reach. And yeah. No. Obviously, you can there's I I won't get into, like, the boring details, but, like, you can see different cities around the world where there's simply more more more activity in the AI space from an engineering perspective. So I think the the cities I shared with you were by the way, this is I'm now repeating myself.

Right? Like, so San Francisco, New York City, London. Those are those are just the top three markets where we notice that that startups, companies, and individual engineers are, like, are are are doing a ton of work with AI. Often, what if you're gonna dig into the reasons, there are just, like there are, like, large centers of excellence in those cities. So for instance, Google has a huge, like, campus of of people working on Gemini and and other AI tooling in London.

I, like, literally walked by it as I was meeting a a friend for lunch. I forget the the exact neighborhood I was in. Right? I I walked by this huge building. Cross.

Yeah. Yeah. Probably was. Right? And and, you know, so I was just like, oh, wow.

Like, I was just pointing at it. I'm like, wow. That's where that stuff is happening. So there's just a ton there's a center of excellence in London for a lot of AI engineering. San Francisco, like, I don't have to say anything more about that.

Right? I mean, just it's Yeah. You know, it's like a it's the heavyweight titan and, you know, it's sort of like centers of excellence for AI engineering. And same with New York. There's a lot of, like, really interesting stuff happening in New York.

I and by the way, I'm sure I'm leaving, like, cities out, and people maybe they can hit me up on Twitter and tell me what I missed. But but the the I don't I don't mean to slight any other city that is doing really interesting things. I think from a pure field marketing perspective, this is, like, less DevRel, and this is more just sort of generic field marketing. But, like, you just limited you have limited people, and you have limited money and, like, limited resources overall. So sure.

Like, are there is there a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh city that we should that we should that we should sort of serve? Probably. But right now, you know, I've got a team of four people that are sort of geographically spread around the world, and we have to balance, the time that we spend on the road, in in the field, with the time, doing more of the, scalable, activities that you talked about earlier. Right? Creating content, working with the product team, improving our tutorials.

Those are the kind of things that you those are also incredibly important in terms of our mission of serving developers. So we have to be really careful and thoughtful about, like, when do we kind of go to an event and which events will we go to and, like, what markets are gonna provide, like, the the highest ROI or just provide, like, the most leverage.

Yeah. I could imagine that it does language come into it as well because I was speaking to the guys at Mastro, and they were saying, like, that 20% of their users are in Japan, which is like Yeah. It's kinda shocking to me. But Yeah. I it's just Japan seems like significantly more diff like for most companies, they're gonna be based in The US.

Right? Like and then like Yeah. It's like London is quite easy to come to. It's like same language like, you know. But like if you're going to Japan, it's like probably need like someone on the ground who really, you know, is like bilingual and all this sort of stuff.

It's probably like more difficult. I don't know.

You're completely right about Japan. I don't I don't know what the usage of Langflow is in Japan. I'm I'm actually you've made me curious. I'm gonna have to go look into it. I I feel really confident that the the master team did some really smart things localizing their documentation in multiple languages.

That's sort of a especially, like, with AI these days, like, there's like, it's it's relatively easy to use AI to do that. I I have heard from, like, many, many different people that from a field marketing perspective, you should never even consider or bother going to Japan unless you have strong language skills. So sure. I mean, like, I mean, you can you can say bilingual, but, like, you know, that that might be unnecessary. Like, you might you might simply need to have people who are completely fluent in Japanese, which is which, by the way, like, is, like, is is very different than most other countries.

Most other countries, you can pick anyone. Right? You could pick Brazil or Germany or Spain. Right? Most most other countries, you almost can't be a developer unless you are bilingual and and and have some competency speaking English.

It's not fair, but it's simply it's just kind of like this organic reflection of the fact that so many developer tools and developer tooling companies came out of English speaking countries, and the documentation is a whole is is all in English. So I think, like, I think going backwards in time, like, if you were a developer in Portugal, you would really struggle to be successful if you didn't learn English. That that that fact, like, has not penetrated Japan. So and and by the way, once again, like, no judgment. I I as an English speaker, like, you know, I'm lucky in the sense that, like, I don't have to learn a second language to do the thing that I love, which is programming.

And I totally respect anyone in Japan who just has no interest in learning a second language just to sort of be a software engineer. So I so I think it's incumbent on on the companies that want to serve the Japanese audience to, like, do it the right way. Right? Make sure obviously, like, make sure that their documentation is completely translated, hopefully translated as well as possible. And then if you are going to engage, like, on the ground in a field activity, like, make sure you're doing it with people that are, like, you know, completely native in the language.

And and by the way, like, not just the language, Jack, but, I mean, like, customs. Mhmm. Right? Like, events, there's a lot you sort of take for granted. Right?

Like Yeah. Culturally, you know, the idea like, remember do you remember when I invited people on stage to kinda raise their hand and Yeah. Say, like, whether they were looking for people to join their team or they were looking for a team to join? Like, that's I don't know the answer, but, like, it's possible that that would be really culturally insensitive in other countries. Right?

So so you would need to make sure from an event design perspective, like, are you being thoughtful? And are you are you tailoring it to to to the expectations of the people? Another, like, nugget of DevRel wisdom, which I think happens almost, like, automatically today, but, like, was not automatic ten or fifteen years ago, was that you should meet developers where they are. So, you know, classic enterprise software, like, whatever, like, big company stuff was like, hey, like, we're Microsoft. If you're a developer, you should come to our our Microsoft conference to learn about, like, our tools.

Like, this is like and we're we're going back to the eighties and the nineties and stuff. Right? Yeah. That was just like that was this the the idea that Microsoft would sponsor a third party conference was a completely ludicrous idea. Right?

The idea was that developers had to come to them. Or the idea that, like, if you if you built a product or an API, like, the idea that, like, it would be available in anything other than, like, you know, Visual Studio was, like, laughable. Right? Now the world is different. Companies are much better about meeting developers where they already are.

So if I use some non Microsoft IDE, there's a good chance that there's a plug in for some Microsoft product, like, in my IDE because companies are getting better at meeting them where they are. But the same is true for events. Right? You know? Like, you know, go go to where they are and meet them on their terms, and you'll just sort of and that's that's just a high empathy approach, but it but it it works.

Right? It, like, it really helps. It turns out that, like, when you're trying to get people to, like, adopt your products, showing them some respect and and having empathy for them is is something that that is really useful.

And so if we were if someone was deciding they were gonna go like, do some field marketing in Japan, maybe they would sponsor, like, existing events first of all or, like, try and, like, get a booth somewhere and, like, that was already happening. Like, set this up kind of

If it existed. Right? So I think, like, we we kinda said, like, you should like, if you're imagining that you wanna run a hackathon, you should first ask yourself, like, are they already happening? You know? Like, are you are you are you filling are you filling an unmet need, or are you just jumping on a bandwagon?

Right? I think in general, it's better to fill unmet needs than to jump on bandwagons. And once again, in terms of, like, a bias for action. Right? Like, you know, if you're kinda fifty fifty on it, do it.

Right? I mean, so long as you have the right intentions and the right attitude, there is very little downside. Right? You know, the worst case scenario is that, like, people it turns out that people in a certain market aren't interested in spending the weekend hacking on things. And that's, like, that's a disappointing, like, marketing outcome, but it's it's still there's a lot there's a you can learn more from failure than you learn from success.

Right? Like, we on the team on my team, after every single event that we either run or that we participate in, we write up a one page retrospective where we just sort of, like, make sure that we document everything about what are the things that worked, what are the things that didn't work, and, like, what did we learn from this event. It's just it's a good it's a good sort of it's a good habit to get into. It's just a good reminder that, like, nothing ever works perfectly. So long as you're learning something from it, it's it's valuable too.

Like, I think you won't be surprised. Like, I think that one of the things that didn't work is that the venue didn't have air conditioning. You know? And we we booked it we booked it in, like, you know, March, you know, back when, you know, temperatures were I'm sorry. I'm I'm not a I'm not a I'm not a good sell not a good Celsius guy, but, like, it was a lot cooler back in March.

Yeah. And then by the time we showed up in late June

was so hot.

So yeah. But, you know, but I think, like, you you can learn from it. Right? Mhmm. You can you you can you can realize, like, oh, in London, not not every you can't take for granted that every building has AC.

Right? As a as an American, who has not organized a lot of events in London, like, this is not something that I understood. Right? You know, in The US, like, pretty much any venue that, like, would actually charge month they that would have the that would charge you is going to have is gonna have air conditioning. Right?

Yep. So the lessons that you learn, they just change every time. Right? It's another another thing another kinda nugget like, a little nugget of wisdom, I guess, is when I worked at Twilio, we and this is not a DevRel thing. This is, like, a company thing.

One of the core sort of principles for the company, core values, was that you start with the why. Because the why, like, deeply, deeply understanding anything, like, you know, understanding developers or understanding, like, a problem domain, that is how you figure out the what, right, or the how. Right? A a real common failure mode with almost anything is people building, like, playbooks where it's just like, oh, like, here it's like an instruction manual. Like, oh, here's how you hackathon or, you know, here's how you prod here's how you build an dev tool or here now those those things are not, like, bad.

And I I I'm not discouraging people from creating those artifacts, but they're kind of like they they they they're they're slightly deceptive because it makes it feel like it's assembling IKEA furniture. Right? Like, if I just do these things, Carter promises it's all gonna work out. Right? And I think, ultimately, I think that those things are useful, but I think, like, if you need to be a reasonably, thoughtful, empathetic, creative, problem solving kind of person because you're gonna run into things that the instruction manual didn't define, right, or didn't specify, or or the environment is gonna change under your feet.

You know? Like, I don't know. Like, people used to behave a certain way, and now they're behaving a slightly different way. So for instance, bolt.new is currently running, like, arguably the largest hackathon of all time, and it's completely online. I don't have any inside information on what's happening or how it's going, but they've done a great job of, at a bare minimum, driving a lot of awareness about a fully virtualized online event.

And I I can't wait to see how it goes. Right? I know I know for me, I'm biased towards in person events probably because of the of, you know, just how, you know, how lackluster online events felt during COVID. So, you know, my personal bias is, like, I really wanna I want to meet people in person. I want them to meet each other in person.

I just think it's more fun to do things in person. And, you know, when you're in person, you can go to a an after party at a fun Mexican cocktail place where, Jack, you you can wear that that that really fun fun shirt and not feel out of place. Yes. So so so for so for me, like, I I understand, like, you know, in person events are not as scalable as online events. In person events are more expensive than online events.

It's fine. Like, I I totally get that. I think there's room for both. I think it'll be really interesting to see how it goes and be really interesting to see if more more companies or more communities, like, mimic the model.

That would be really interesting, actually. Carter, I think we've we've gotten way over

Yeah.

The time that you gave me. So thank you so much. I really appreciate that.

Of course.

This so I just kept asking you. I kept having more questions. So I thank you for answering all of them.

Of course. Yeah. I know. Super super happy to be here. I think, like, I hope that I hope for folks who are listening, like, if you haven't been to a hackathon, go to hackathon.

Like, take it from Jack. They're they can be really really fun. And yeah. And if you live in a community where there just aren't a lot of hackathons, there are plenty of resources and plenty of people like me and other folks that I know that would be more than happy to kinda show you the ropes. So it's it's it's a super fun thing and definitely worth worth participating in and worth doing.

Oh, and by the way, we're actually me and a bunch of folks here in the Seattle area are organizing the first ever Cascadia AI hackathon. It's coming up, I believe, September. So yeah. I mean, super super excited to take all the things that I've learned about Hackathon and kinda bring it to the community here in the Seattle area. So really looking forward to that.