We are happy to share the great news that the paper “Designing Corporate Hackathons With a Purpose: The Future of Software Development” co-authored by our Associate Professor Alexander Nolte with colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University, Github and Microsoft was named as the Runner-up for the 2019 Best Paper Award from IEEE Software by the IEEE Computer Society Publications Board. IEEE Software is one of the leading practitioner focused journals in the field of Software Engineering.
Starting as competitive coding events in the early 2000s hackathons and similar time-bounded events have since become a global phenomenon. During such events, people form – often adhoc – teams and engage in intense collaboration over a short period of time to complete a project that is of interest to them.
In the awarded paper Nolte and co-authors discuss that hackathons can be organized around goals such as enriching social networks, facilitating collaborative learning, and workforce development based on empirical studies of 10 hackathons held by scientific communities, a corporation, and universities as well as a review of published literature. They also elaborate design choices that can scaffold the organization of hackathons and their trade-offs. Design choices include identifying a suitable mixture of attendee skills, the selection process for projects and teams, and whether to hold a competitive or collaborative event. Hackathons can achieve multiple goals if designed carefully.
The IEEE Computer Society is the world’s leading membership organization dedicated to computer science and technology. Serving more than 60,000 members, the IEEE Computer Society is the trusted information, networking, and career-development source for a global community of technology leaders that includes researchers, educators, software engineers, IT professionals, employers, and students.
Announcement by IEEE: https://www.computer.org/publications/best-paper-award-winners
