Hackathons/Handbook/Design

Event Design and Theme

You can make your event unique and give it a local touch.

Give your event a special theme – e.g. by planning fun Social events with a local theme, but also by how you decorate the venue with roll-ups, banners and placards, by choosing fun room names, and what sorts of goodies and badges you hand out to participants.

Style guidelines

Follow these rules on how to use the Wikimedia Hackathon logo and brand your event.

Style guide for the Wikimedia Hackathon logo, colors, type, and other event brand elements. Prepared in 2017 for the Vienna Hackathon.

Fonts

These fonts are used for Wikimedia Hackathons according to the style guide.

Montserrat
Source Sans Serif

Printing materials: general advice

When deciding how many to produce, consider costs and re-usage:

Materials branded with your location and year (e.g.: Wikimedia Hackathon Vienna 2017) and materials with sponsors logos can not be re-used.
Materials with the generic Wikimedia Hackathon logo can be re-used by the next organizers.

Welcome packs

The first impression is the registration. You can help the participants navigate their event by including various things in the welcome pack.

What could they include? (Descriptions of items see below in the respective chapter)

Name Badge with lanyard
Stickers
optional: T-shirt
optional: other gift (e.g. a branded water bottle at the Wikimedia Hackathon 2017 Vienna)

Promotional material

To invite participants to your event. Hand them out or hang them up on events, conferences, local hacker spaces, etc.

Flyers
Stickers
Posters

Examples and templates

Roll-ups and Banners

To decorate the venue and to brand the event, print roll-ups and banners, showing

the generic Wikimedia Hackathon logo
the special Wikimedia Hackathon logo with location and year (e.g. Wikimedia Hackathon 2018 Barcelona)
logos of sponsors

Posters about the Friendly Space Policy and Code of Conduct

It's a good practice to print and hang posters with the most important paragraphs of the Friendly Space Policy and Code of Conduct. The poster should also include the points of contact (and possibly how to recognize them, e.g. what color the staff T-shirt or badge is) for concerns regarding it. The poster should note that both policies apply.

Name Badges

Event name badges are very helpful. They are used by event staff to recognize participants, and for participants to recognize and get information about each-other easily. The main purpose is to reduce the stress of having to remember dozens of new names, therefore the names on the badges should be huge—at least 1.5 centimeters high.

The badges are generally worn around a participants neck, on a lanyard.

Information to Include on the Badge

Name
User Name/Nick Name
Event logo

Optionally, you can include these on the name badge itself, or use stickers for the same purpose:

Languages spoken
Interest area(s)
Affiliation
Empty area, for participants to write in

Tips and details

The badge should be two sided - the two sides can be different or identical, but each side should have the participants name at the very least.
Emphasize the person's given name, which is what you actually use to talk to them.
Any information that isn't big enough to read from several meters away, won't be useful.
Remember, not every language has the same givenname lastname order

Fun ideas / inspiration

For other advice, see "6 inspiring conference badges" and Mike Davidson's "Building a better conference badge".
There is ongoing work to produce a printable & customizable babel sticker. See: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T128722

Plastic cases

Your badges will probably need plastic cases, which can be clipped onto the lanyard.

Alternative to badges

If you have a very small event or don't have enough staff time or budget, to print name badges, you should at least provide "hi my name is" stickers and pens, so that people can write their own names and still be identified.

Examples and templates

Wikimedia Hackathon 2017 Vienna name badges

Lanyards / Identification

To help with identifying staff/helpers and participants who do not wish to have their photo taken, use colored lanyards. Make sure these colors are explained during registration when participants pick up their lanyard, during the opening session, and when applicable throughout the event, such as when speaking to press – especially important regarding people who don't want their picture taken.

The best solution we have found:

Standard participant lanyard (green, white or black), this means that photos are OK
Yellow participant lanyard - this means that the participant is probably OK being in a photo but would like to be asked first.
Red participant lanyard - this means no photos ever.

At a minimum it is a good idea to at least have the "no photos" lanyard option. In some cases a large sticker (camera with a red cross through it) attached to the name badge has been used, but this is not as visible from all angles.

Many events like to use lanyard color to represent the event organizers. If this is the case you can consider having organizers identified by a t-shirt, bandana, or a second lanyard. If that is not possible, in some cases a 4th color lanyard for organizers can work - and any organizers who don't want photos can wear two lanyards at once.

Additionally it is good practice to review Wikimedia Commons, social media or other locations where photos may be uploaded from your event to confirm that there are no visible red lanyards in the images.

Stickers

Everyone loves stickers! People like to collect them on, on the back of their laptops.

You can also use stickers to customize name badges: wiki projects, areas of interest, languages, and blank stickers.

Examples and templates

Wikimedia Hackathon 2017 Vienna stickers

201705 Hackathon in Vienna 06

Badges

Another way to distinguish participants and to help them tell others about themsleves without words are badges and pins.

Examples and templates

Newcomer badges from Wikimedia Hackathon 2016 Jerusalem
Experienced user badges from Wikimedia Hackthon 2016 Jerusalem

Booklet

Consider including a schedule, or local maps, inside the event badge.

Include useful reference information like the Wi-Fi password, contact information for the organizers, and highlights from the schedule

Examples and templates

Booklet from Wikimedia Hackathon 2017 Vienna: PDF

T-Shirts

You can use T-shirts:

as goodies for all participants (consider this in the budget, as that can be costly)

to identify staff/ helpers and other groups (e.g. mentors at the Wikimedia Hackthon 2017 Vienna)

take into consideration that if these people have to wear the T-shirt during the whole event, they need more than one T-shirt (2-3 shirts).
use brightly coloured t-shirts, if you want people to be easily recognisable (which should be the case for staff)

How many should we order?

This is a question of your budget, whether you choose to have T-shirts for everyone or just special groups.

General Rule: Order too many otherwise you will run out of sizes! Leftover T-shirts will be great give-aways for participants who want to take them home for loved ones/ as additional souvenirs.

Different sizes and cuts

Order different sizes and cuts (lady fit, standard).

Fun Ideas

Different colored t-shirts for interest in different projects at the hackathon (keep in mind costs and organizational challenge)

Examples and templates

Wikimedia Hackathon 2017 Vienna:

green T-shirts with unicorn print for organizers/ staff - link to unicorn design
black T-shirts with owl print for mentors - link to owl design

Wikimedia Hackathon 2016 Jerusalem:

violet T-shirt with Hackathon logo for all participants

Notes

If you expect participants to wear the t-shirts at your event considering washing them first if that is possible
If you need organizers or mentors to wear tshirts to be physically identified at the event and it is a multi-day event the people will need one t-shirt per day or an easy way to wash and dry their t-shirts at night
European sizes usually run smaller than American sizes. When people are indicating which size they need keep this in mind. Someone who wears an American small might need a European medium.

Goodies for participants

It's nice to get something in as part of your welcome package at the registration.

Examples and templates

Hackathon-branded water bottle from Wikimedia Hackathon 2017 Vienna
Post card from Wikimedia Hackathon 2017 Vienna
T-Shirts from Wikimedia Hackathon 2016 Jerusalem

Room name signs

Previous hackathon organizers have named the rooms in the venue according to a local theme. (e.g. Viennese food specialities at the Wikimedia Hackathon 2017, each room had a little placard with a picture of the food and its Wikipedia entry.)

Take into consideration that some local words may not be easy to use (remember or pronounce) for an international crowd.

Consider giving rooms a simple name and a number and use both when you are referring to it, different people remember words or numbers more easily. Example: "room 105 - Pacific". Make sure the room numbering system goes in order and makes sense.

Examples and templates

Room signs from Wikimedia Hackathon 2017 Vienna