We just wrapped up FOSSHack 2024 and this seemed like a good time to revisit this thread. I took a good amount of time to reflect on our learnings from organising FOSSHack this year while also regularly comparing it with previous FOSSHack models, and this new idea we proposed a few months ago.
FOSSHack has been organised in the following models so far:
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A completely online event
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A hybrid event happening online with a central edition organised by FOSS United at RVCE in Bangalore.
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A hybrid event happening online with a central edition organised by FOSS United, and smaller independtly run FOSSHack editions. [FOSSHack 3.0]
The idea for this year’s model for FOSSHack was mostly inspired by this suggestion by Kailash.
( I was especially sold to this idea because the “localhost” wordplay seemed just too good to ignore 
)
After a lot of back and forth, this is what we decided -
- A decentralised model wherein anyone who wants to host FOSSHack in their city can apply.
- Financial support and guidance from FOSS United.
The good
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We were able to reach a record number of participants this year, while only 30% of the participants opted for hacking locally (and only around 50-60% of them showed up at their localhosts), this definitely helped us spread the word better.
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We received 400 projects this year, which is more than twice the number of projects compared to last year’s edition.
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For a lot of cities, this was perhaps their first hackathon around FOSS. For a lot of organisers, this was their first event of this scale.
The bad
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Despite our best efforts to make this event as decentralised as we could, the hackathon still ended up being a huge overhead on the FOSS United team.
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It is very difficult to find organisers who understand our philosophy and also have organised events (especially hackathons in the past). Hence, they end up needing help in at least one of the above areas.
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Colleges can be very hard to deal with. The amount of bureaucracy and time that goes into getting permissions for an event is something that we did not take into account. Even if they are interested in organising the event, it’s hard for them to understand the purpose and nature of the event. There was at least one case of the authorities trying to extract more funds than required from the foundation, even though the organiser tried to explain to them that FOSS United is a non profit.
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There doesn’t need to be an “official” venue run by the org itself
We did end up doing that after all. We didn’t receive any interest in organising a hackathon in Bangalore, but a lot of interest from participants who wanted to attend one. We ended up personally reaching out to potential venues (Devfolio, Bruno were happy to host the event and did a great job there!) and also hosting one ourselves at Samagata foundation. This combined with the IndiaFOSS prep, managing the other 10 locahosts and other organisational tasks became almost a nightmare!
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The amount of food (and money) that went to waste because of no shows in most of the editions is something that we need to really think about if we continue with the same model.
Going forward
We are still in the midst of discussions and reflecting on the pros and cons of this year’s model, but there are a few ideas that have been discussed internally.
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Go back to the previous model. Online hackathon and (maybe) a central FOSS United edition in BLR.
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Top that off with the CityFOSS conference model (meaning every city chapter/college club gets to do their own miniFOSSHack once a year)
I personally think this model has potential, we just need to figure out how to make this sustainable in terms of cost, time and effort. But if we don’t, I personally wouldn’t want to go through this again next year.
Goes without saying, converging IndiaFOSS and FOSShack would have been a terrible idea and I’m glad we still have 5 weeks left to prepare for IndiaFOSS