My_Idea

My Ideas and Feedback to help make Hackathons easy, better and fun for everyone.

Honestly, this is what I was expecting Devpost to ask long time ago. I will go straight to the points with my ideas and feedback.

1.)

Introducing Social Media Share Button

Introduction of Social Media Share Buttons on each hackathon Posts to make it easier for developers to share the hackathon links/details across various Social Platform Eg. to their friends, families, loved ones and to their various developers groups onWhatsapp,Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, Linkeldn etc..

Developers can also used this Social Media Share Button to easily share their submitted Hackathon especially in the case of Hackathon Submission Votings etc.

2.)

Internal Group Chat or Messaging system

There is need to have basic internal Chat or Messaging system to enable various Developers Team to easily connect and share basic info during and throughout hackathon on devpost. This is very important because not all the Hackathon Managers has or can provide developers with their Slack or Discord Discussion Server Link for Connections

Finally, we need something like internal Slack or Discord Group/Team Chat integrations on devpost.

3.)

Improving Voting System:

Some Hackathon Post has prizes/room for voting after hackathon submission. Voting System is one of the ways to directly ask your friends to view, share and vote on your projects.

Developers also use the Voting System to run Hackathon Marketing campaign in other to get more fans and more people to view, like and vote on his Projects.

Devpost should be able to work on the voting system at least to privately let the developers knows number of votes they have on their projects, who actually voted on their projects and many more. This will encourage us to persuade our friends who has not voted on our projects to vote and thus we gain more fans on devpost.

4.)

Absence of Prizes Tags/Values Updates Notification System:

This is one of main reason Developers do not want to participate in certain Hackathons on Devpost. Some Hackathon Managers often set prizes to $0(USD), TBA etc and in some cases they do not even include any prizes details at all. When we see such kind of Hackathon, We developers tends to skip it because prizes are not well detailed or specified.

In this context, integrating a Prizes Awards Updates Notification Reminder is very necessary. When the Hackathon Managers finally updates their Prizes Award values, This will send an email or sms messages to all participants that the Prize awards on a particular hackathon has been updated. Then we can easily re-check it out and see if we can participate forthat hackathon.

5.)

Cash Prizes Awards

My research with other participating developers has showed that 99.9% of developers round the world would prefer to engage in hackathons that offers Cash Monetary prizes. .

6.)

Automatic Team Merging System.

Realistically, Coding problems are easily solved when there are 2 or more people/developers that works together to achieve a particular goal. Some Hackathons may required that team of 2-4 members should work together on a particular projects. sometimes getting everyone together is not that easy.

In this regards there is a serious needs to have a system that automatically sorts and merge individuals into teams based on locations, interests, languages,themes etc. This is very important especially for New-Webie or New-Comer on devpost

7.)

Needs for Hackathon Themes

There is need for all hackathon to have their themes/direction explicitly and physically displayed on the Hackathon Page. By Themes, I mean the Hackathon Managers should be able give us a clue on the direction of the apps they are expecting. Am saying this because we developers will be disappointed to see any Hackathon Manager who refuses to award prizes on the ground that the submitted applications does not meet their objectives. Developing application is not easy. It takes time and to this effect, it will be joyful to always see the fruits of our Labors(The Prize Awards).

8.)

Additional Local Time Zone & Dates Integration

While Devpost often show the deadline submission time eg. 3 days to deadline.. This is good but the deadline also needs to be explicitly define as per time zone. We will also like to see something like the application deadline is on Monday 20th march 2023. Time: 02:13:00 etc.

I believe this additional explicit display of deadline stuff in our various Local time Zone is needed to save us time from jumping to google for time conversion and to also help minimize panic to zero along the projects actual submission deadline within the area of our applications/Projects coding responsibilities.

9.)

Some Hackathon Rules Not Explicitly Defined:

Some Hackathon Managers are not specific with their hackathon rules and regulations. Some will post hackathon without specifying if its for Online/Vitual Participants or for Attendees. Also the People or country/region involved.

In this regards Hackathon Manager should compulsory states the rules boldly on their post like who and whom the hackathon is made for, countries/regions allowed, Whether its for students/graduates or just anyone. Am saying this because I have encountered this issues severally on many Hackathon Post on devpost. This we save we developers time to look and participate on other hackathons where the rules detail is okay by us.

10.)

Integrating Private Feedback/Reviewing System for Submitted Judged Projects.

Personally, this is one thing I needs to find out in the submitted Projects judging process. We need to have a clear impression that the Judges are not bias in their submitted projects reviews and judging process.

At the end of judging, there is a need for Feedback System that will send us all who submitted a projects our various Scores and Points based on the Judges judging criteria. They should also send us a note/feedback on why our app wins or why it was not selected. This will help us developers to know the areas we have ERR... or having short comings and then make corrections in case of future Contest. I want to be a Winner and so we will like to know what I have done right or wrong in my various submitted projects via feedback system.

11.)

Integrating a New Page on devpost for easy access of all Hackathons with Upcoming/Nearby Deadline.

Devpost needs to add new Page on their website eg. nearby_deadline_hackathon.html.
This Page will display to all hackathon participant all the Hackathons whose deadline time is near or close to submission. Will like to see either Analogue or Digital Deadline Time attached to those Hackathons

This will help the developers to fasten their projects and then try to meetup with the projects submission deadline.

12.) Integrating a New Page on devpost that sorts Online/Virtual Hackathons from Attendees/Venue Hacathons.

In Devpost, all Hackathons are clustered together in just one page. Sorting Online Hackathons from Attendes/Venues Hackathons becomes a bottleneck. Someone has to keep on scrolling and scrolling all the way.

For International Participants Online Hackathon seems to be the best for us as opposed to Hackathons that requires that you attend in person(Attendees/Venue Hacathons). In other words all this hackathon has to be sorts for easy access.

Devpost should have 2 new pages. One page strictly for online/Virtual hackathon eg online_hackathons_only.html and other strictly for Attendees/Venue Hackathons eg Attendees_Venue_Hackathons_only.html

Alternatively, Devpost can choose to create a searching System that easily allow developers to search and sorts online hackathons from Attendees/Venue Hackathons.

13.)

Integrating a Realtime Notification System on Devpost.

Currently, Devpost notification system is not realtime. You will have to refresh pages before you can see any new message alerts. People like me do not always access email every hour. This realtime notification is very important to ensure that critical messages reaches the recipients in real-time.

14.)

Integrating Dynamic Calendar System

Most Teams round the world uses Calendar System to manage their tasks. In devpost, it will be awesome to have internal Dynamic Calendar System that can help us to easily manage our various hackathons and projects respectively.

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