Running hackathons

A hackathon is an organization-scoped voting event: it gathers projects, opens voting to the right audience, protects the tally from fraud, and announces winners when you're ready. This guide walks through configuring a hackathon end to end and choosing the options that fit your audience.

What a hackathon is#

Each hackathon lives inside one organization and bundles together everything a competition needs:

• A set of projects that participants submit and maintain.
• A voting phase you open and close.
• A results phase you announce when the winners are decided.
• Its own admins, so you can delegate running the event without handing over the whole organization.

You manage all of this from the hackathon's Admin panel. Projects, voting, and results each have their own area within that panel.

Choose visibility#

Visibility controls who can find and see the hackathon. Pick the level that matches how public you want the competition to be.

You can change visibility as the event progresses — for example, keep a hackathon private while projects are being prepared, then switch it to unlisted or public when voting opens.

Add and manage projects#

Projects are the entries people vote on. Both participants and hackathon admins can add projects.

1. Create a project from the hackathon's Admin panel or project area.
2. Each project gets its own detail page where voters can learn about the entry.
3. Participants keep their entry current by posting updates — a video, a link, or notes — so the project page reflects the latest state of the work.

Because every project has a shareable detail page, you can circulate direct links to individual entries during judging or promotion.

Set up voting#

Voting has two modes. Choose the one that matches who should be allowed to vote.

Email-based voting#

External voters — people who aren't signed-in members — vote by email. Each voter receives a one-time verification code by email and confirms it before their vote counts. This lets you open voting to an outside audience without giving everyone an account.

Member-based voting#

Signed-in organization members vote directly. Use this when the electorate is your existing membership and you don't want to collect outside email addresses.

In both modes, the rule is one vote per person or email address per hackathon. A voter cannot stack multiple votes.

Restrict who can vote#

Use the allowed-emails list to limit voting to specific people. You can add:

• Individual email addresses, to permit named voters.
• Whole domains, to permit anyone at a given organization.

Only addresses that match the list can cast a vote. Leave the list open when you want anyone (subject to your visibility setting) to participate.

Fraud detection#

Votare protects the tally automatically. You don't configure these checks — they run in the background and surface anything suspicious.

• Device de-duplication stops the same device from voting more than once.
• IP + user-agent de-duplication catches repeat votes from the same client signature.
• Email-alias normalization collapses tricks like Gmail dot and plus variants (for example, treating name+1@gmail.com and n.ame@gmail.com as the same person) so aliases can't inflate a count.

Every anomaly is recorded as a violation you can review. For the full breakdown of what gets logged and how to interpret it, see Audit logs, email logs & security.

Results workflow#

Getting to announced results is a two-step process, and you stay in control of both steps.

1. Enable voting. Voters can now cast ballots. You decide whether vote counts are shown live or hidden until announced — hiding them keeps the race suspenseful and reduces bandwagon effects.
2. Announce results. This is a manual toggle you flip when the outcome is final. Announcing reveals the results and awards recognition.

When results are announced, winners and runners-up receive badges that appear with their projects.

Deciding when to reveal counts#

• Show counts live when transparency matters and you want participants to watch the race unfold.
• Hide until announced when you want an impartial reveal, or when live counts might discourage later entries or sway voters.

Organizer analytics#

As an organizer you get analytics on how the hackathon is performing:

• Vote distribution across projects.
• Participation — how many eligible voters took part.
• Reach — how far the hackathon spread.

Use these to gauge turnout mid-event and to report on the competition afterward.

Invite co-admins#

You can invite additional hackathon admins by email, and the invite works even before the person has signed up. When they create their account with that email, they gain admin access to the hackathon. This lets you line up your organizing team ahead of time without waiting for everyone to register.

Countdown timers#

Shared countdown timers help you run the event live. Use them for:

• Sessions — signalling how long a working block or judging window has left.
• Breaks — keeping everyone aligned on when the event resumes.

Because the timers are shared, every participant sees the same clock.

Related#

• Audit logs, email logs & security
• Events & squads
• Members, roles & groups