Planning a Hackathon#

The anatomy of Chroma's GPT-Plugins Hackathon#

April 15, 2023

Over the weekend of April 8th and 9th, Chroma helped run the world's first ChatGPT plugins hackathon. About 100 people participated, 36 teams demoed, and according to our highly scientific evaluation, a good time was had by all.

Running the hackathon was a valuable experience as we ramp up Chroma community participation, both in-person and remote. Like many things we do at Chroma, we planned the hackathon according to simple principles, drawing on our expriences, good and bad, at other events we've attended. Besides 'choose a good venue', and 'keep people fed and caffeinated', the following were some of our basic operating principles.

1. Give people enough time#

Hackathons are often one-day events. Between kickoff, meals, and demos, there's often precious little time to actually work on a project. Participants have limited time to brainstorm and form teams, get to grips with the technology they're working with, then put together a presentation and working demo. This often means that people keep working on things they'd started long before the event itself, leading to less spontaneity. Additionally, timelines tend to slip, and even one-day events can run very late, making them more difficult to attend for many people.

For this Hackathon, we wanted people to start fresh and build something new. We also knew that most people didn't yet have access to ChatGPT plugins, and so would need some extra time to really figure out what they do, and how they work. Keeping this in mind, and making sure we could still have a comfortable schedule, we chose to run the hackathon over two days instead.

The schedule was as follows:

Saturday

10am - Doors open, arrival & breakfast
11am - Kickoff
1:30pm - Lunch
6pm - Dinner
8pm - Doors close

Sunday

10am - Doors open, breakfast
1:30pm - Lunch
4pm - Stop and demo signup
5pm - Demos, judging, prizes
6pm - Wrap

We felt that the first day could be used for understanding and experimentation, and the second for actually doing most of the building. In the end we ran late, but not too late; prizes and wrap-up were done by 7:15pm. Not bad!

One complaint we received here was that the venue was not open overnight, between the two days. I believe this was the right call, we wanted people getting some sleep and coming in fresh, though of course people were free to work elsewhere overnight if they so chose.

2. Provide support#

It can be quite difficult to come to grips with a new technology, tool, or API, especially when you're expected to build a working demo in a day or two. As part of our organizational efforts, we worked with the ChatGPT plugins team from OpenAI, as well as the team from Replit, to make sure our participants had someone to address their questions, provide support, and get them unblocked quickly.

Particularly valuable was Andrey from OpenAI demonstrating how to build a ChatGTP plugin with Replit in under a minute, and subsequently spending time answering audience questions. Participants came away with a much clearer picture of how things worked, and were able to get quick support when they ran into issues.

Being on-site to support participants was also valuable for both the OpenAI and Replit teams. Talking to users is the best way to understand where the sharp edges and misconceptions about your product are, and I'm told at least one issue was debugged live onsite. We think that having people knowledgeable in the technologies and tools likely to be used by participants, given the hackathon theme, is generally useful, and will be an idea we'll carry forward.

3. Play it fast and loose#

Plans seldom survive contact with reality. Our approach with this hackathon was to rely on resilient systems, rather than rigidly planning every detail. We ensured we would have help with everything from catering to on-site IT / AV support, with plenty of slack from the Chroma team to pick up any loose pieces / last minute requests. Extra people beat extra planning - humans are adaptable, rigid plans aren't.

Besides resilience, this principle allowed us a great degre of spontaneity. We were able to award prizes across categories we found interesting during the demo presentations, rather than sticking to a pre-determined set. This let us reward creativity in ways that might not have fit into anything more traditional. In fact, the 1st prize trophy itself was improvised on the day.

This approach, biasing adaptability and action, is core to many of the things we do at Chroma, and it was exciting to see it applied to this event.

Thank You#

Special thanks to Retool for hosting us at their excellent office space, and providing on-site facilities support. The sun deck was a particular favorite for many. Thanks to OpenAI for opening up plugins access to our participants, and for being present both days to answer questions and provide support. Thanks to Replit for quickly cranking out plugins templates which made it super easy for people to get started, and providing on-site support to help people with their Repls, as well as for the additional prize sponsorship.

Want to hack with us?#

We're excited to ivite applications for Chroma's new Hacker in Residence program:

Build impressive, thought provoking AI applications with long term memory
Give product requests to Chroma team to build what you need
SF preferred (US Remote ok, we'll fly you to SF for a week)
Be largely self guided, but part of the early Chroma team
$10k/month, 1-3 months

Apply here