It's Sunday evening and the hackathon is over. Your demo worked, mostly. Someone at the next table asked if they could try it when it's ready, and you said yes before you thought about what "ready" might mean. You head home with a half-built thing on your laptop and a feeling you haven't had in a while: I made this.
By Wednesday the laptop is closed. Nobody has asked how it's going, because nobody is in charge of asking.
When a company runs a hackathon, the good ones end with a list: who owns which project, what happens next, when people meet again. When you go on your own, the event ends and the list never gets written. That missing list is what this post is about.
Projects that keep going usually have a reason to
Researchers Alexander Nolte, Irene-Angelica Chounta and James Herbsleb studied what happens to hackathon projects after the event. In a paper published in 2020, they found that some projects do continue after the event, and that carrying on for a few weeks and carrying on for the long term look different. Short-term continuation was linked to things like technical preparation and winning. Long-term continuation was linked to the team's mix of skills and to whether the team intended to grow the project's reach beyond the event. And a burst of intensive activity right afterward was associated with a lower chance of long-term continuation.
That study looked at teams, and it describes associations, not a recipe. Still, two ideas carry over well when you're one person: decide on purpose that the project continues, and pace yourself so the first week back isn't the last.
A hackathon gives your idea a weekend. What happens next is something you get to decide.
Be your own project owner
Before the weekend feeling fades, take fifteen minutes and write the note a good organizer would have sent you:
- Owner: you. Write your name next to the project, even if it feels a little silly.
- Who it's for: one sentence on who you'd like to use it, or why you want it to exist. This is your version of an intention to grow its reach.
- Next step: one task small enough for a weeknight, like "fix the sign-in bug" or "send it to the person who asked."
- Next check-in: a date on the calendar, about a week out, when you'll look at it again.
If you've read our post on keeping momentum after build night, this is the same idea with a hackathon's adrenaline added: shrink the next step and keep it where you can see it.
Pick a pace you can keep
It's tempting to ride the high into three late nights in a row. Sometimes that works. Often it ends with a tired week and a project you start quietly avoiding. A steadier rhythm, like one or two short sessions a week, is easier to protect alongside work and everything else you're holding up.
Replace the organizer with a person
What a company hackathon has that you don't is someone who expects an update. You can bring that back on your own.
In a small study at Dominican University of California, psychologist Gail Matthews compared five groups of people working on goals. The group that sent weekly progress reports to a friend accomplished more than the groups who only wrote their goals down or kept them to themselves. It was a small study, presented at a conference rather than published in a peer-reviewed journal, and it relied on people's own reports. Still, it matches what a lot of us notice: telling someone, and keeping on telling them, helps.
An accountability partner can be that person. They don't need to understand your code. They only need to ask each week what you got done and what's next, and to listen kindly to the answer, including the weeks when the answer is "not much." If you'd like more ideas for the days between events, our page on what to do after build night gathers them in one place.
This week
Write your owner's note tonight: your name, who it's for, one next step and a check-in date. Send it to one person and ask if they'd be willing to check in with you next week. If no one comes to mind, that's what Dreamaker is for: when it launches, it will match you with a real accountability partner within 24 hours.