The Book of Hackathons
An opinionated, citation-backed field manual for everyone who runs, judges, sponsors, and competes in hackathons.
Written by Charan. With wins, losses, and a lot of arguing about rubrics.
Sections
Latest
- Field NotesTeam SPD
- Field NotesTen Coffees in Nuketown
- ManifestoApples to Apples — by Problem, by Track, or by Abstracted Rubric
- ManifestoThere Are Ten Working Formats, Not Two
Why this site exists
There are great event listings. There are platform docs. There is no encyclopedia written from inside the work, with citations that hold up and stories that did not get edited for PR. This is that.
Three layers stacked: a Manifesto on top, a journal in the middle, an encyclopedia underneath. The Manifesto carries the thesis. The journal carries the stories that prove the thesis. The encyclopedia provides the reference scaffolding. Each layer cross-links to the others, every claim cites a primary source, every section has a single voice it never drifts from.
Eight-week launch sprint, anchored to a hackathon Charan is organizing. Citation density, voice separation, ASCII-first identity, anti-scope-creep.