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Membership Guidelines

This document outlines the Major League Hacking (MLH) Membership Guidelines. MLH provides all MLH Member Events with the following benefits and resources (upon availability) to ease the lives of organizers and improve the hacker experience. For more details, please go here.

Prerequisites

To be considered for membership your event must meet the following requirements in addition to upholding the Community Values.

  1. Application Date. To successfully support your hackathon, the event must start at least four (4) months in the future from the day that you submit your application. We ask that you apply this far in advance in order for events so that they have enough time to implement our guidance and achieve their fundraising and registration goals.

  2. Event Date. Your hackathon must take place during the current or upcoming academic year (August 31st, 2019 - June 30, 2020).

  3. Free to attend. Member Events do not have entry fees, which makes them open and accessible to all participants, regardless of their financial situations.

  4. Primarily Students. At least 80% of your hackathon’s attendees must be students at the time of the hackathon or have left school within the current academic year.

  5. Level of Study. Student attendees can be enrolled at any level of study at a traditional (middle school, high school, university, etc.) or nontraditional (code bootcamp, homeschool, online, etc.) institution.

  6. Location. We are only able to currently support Member Events located in the following regions:

    • North America: United States, Canada, and Mexico.
    • Europe: The United Kingdom, the European Union, and select other European countries.

  7. Attendance. We require Member Events to have a minimum number of attendees. To qualify to be a Member Event, you must be planning to have at least:

    • United States: 150+ attendees
    • Other Countries: 100+ attendees

  8. Overnight Accommodations. We require Member Events to leave their venues open overnight or provide alternate overnight accommodations for attendees, as many hackers travel long distances to attend hackathons.

  9. Duration. Member Events are 24 to 48 hours long and take place over a weekend (usually Friday to Sunday).

  10. Language. We are only able to work with events that have an English-language website and make announcements during the event in English. If you live in a country where English is not the native language, we encourage you to make announcements and provide information in both languages.

Benefits

We provide all Member Events with the following complementary benefits and resources to ease the lives of organizers and improve the hacker experience. We do not charge organizers or hackers a fee for these benefits.

Before your hackathon:

  1. Dedicated Support & Mentorship. Our team of Community Managers supports hundreds of Member Events every year. We've helped organizers like you handle all sorts of problems and questions. You may participate in Peer Group hours to learn the team's expert advice and receive mentorship when you need it in a 1-on-1 environment.

  2. Season Schedule Listing. We’ll list your event on the official MLH Season schedule. Hundreds of thousands of hackers and sponsors visit this page every single year and use it to discover the events they want to participate in. We’ll also promote your event to hundreds of thousands of hackers and sponsors via social media and/or the MLH monthly newsletter.

  3. Preferred Vendors & Discounts. Organizing a great hackathon can be expensive. To help you save time and money, we have vetted and partnered with amazing vendors that are offering exclusive discounts and priority access to Member Events. Whether it's catering, stickers, or swag, we've got you covered!

  4. Grants for First Time Member Events. All first time Member Event hackathons are eligible for a one-time $1,000 sponsorship and one sponsored ticket to MLH Hackcon from our friends at GitHub. All events are subject to approval from GitHub. Information will be sent out 40 days prior to your hackathon.

  5. MLH Localhost Workshops. Hackers want workshops. We’ve created a program called MLH Localhost to help you run high-quality workshops that get hackers excited either before the hackathon or teach your hackers something new during the event. All you need to do is find a volunteer to facilitate the workshop. We’ll take care of training them on the content and shipping supplies.

During your hackathon:

  1. On-site Support. A representative from MLH will be on-site at your hackathon to help support you. Think of your MLH representatives as an extension of your organizing team. They have a lot of expertise and experience with organizing hackathons and are there to help make sure your event runs smoothly. They’re able to help you with anything you need, from making sure the event runs on-time to mentoring hackers to coordinating judging alongside you to even taking out the trash. They also have extensive experience resolving conflicts with hackers, sponsors, or even organizing teams.

  2. Software Lab. Every hacker who participates in an Member Event gets a bundle of promotional codes and discounts for services from the MLH Software Lab. This includes everything from web hosting credit to free domain names and beyond.

  3. Hardware Lab. The MLH Hardware lab contains the latest and greatest hardware for hackers to loan out for free at all Member Events. We also built software and a process for events to keep track of which attendees have which devices. We are able to add non-MLH Hardware into our checkout system as requested. Lab contents vary by event.

  4. MLH Emergency Budget. On average, hackathons see about a 50% attrition rate between their signups during registration and the actual day-of check-ins. As a result, we encourage organizers to overbook for the hackathon up to 200% and have an emergency budget equal to the cost of one meal included in the total cost of the event. If the following two criteria listed below are satisfied on the day-of your event, then we'll cover the difference in food costs (up to $1,000) to make sure your event doesn't go over budget: - More hackers show up than your target attendance on the day-of your event - You’ve exhausted all of your event’s money, including but not limited to emergency budget, total sponsorship raised, and savings, and purchasing extra food will cause your event finances to run into the negative and/or debt.

  5. MyMLH Support. Member Events who utilize MyMLH  for registration will receive priority support for setup and troubleshooting from our engineering team. MyMLH is an OAuth API that makes registering for hackathons a breeze for hackers by storing their information and allowing them to easily share it with multiple events.

  6. Mini-Events. Our MLH representative on-site will run a 1 hour mini-event during your hackathon (before 9pm) to provide a fun break from hacking and create a bonding experience for your attendees. Previous Mini-Events include Cup Stacking, !Light, Slideshare Karaoke, Werewolf and more.

  7. Season and Sponsor Swag. Your event will receive assorted swag including Season shirts, Season stickers, event specific "I Demoed" stickers, MLH Stickers, GitHub stickers, and feminine hygiene products. Events may also receive assorted swag from MLH Season sponsors such as pens and t-shirts.

  8. Judging Coordination. We know that judging is one of the most stressful periods during a hackathon. Our MLH representative on-site can assist you with running demos and judging during your event in a fair, standardized way. You are still expected to recruit and coordinate the arrival of judges prior to the event.

  9. Mentor Matcher. We partnered up with our friends at Twilio and built the MLH Mentor Matcher to connect the hackers and mentors at your event. Hackers will have access to a custom phone number that they can text whenever they have a question with a description and their location.

  10. Prizes. All Member Events are provided with special prizes to hand out to hackers such as medals for winners and MLH category prizes (such as “Best Domain.com Domain Name” or “Best Use of Google Cloud Platform”). We will confirm these prizes with your event beforehand.

After your hackathon:

  1. Surveys. Anyone who participates in your Member Event will receive a post event survey about their experience. We’ll share this data with you, show you how you compare to other Member Events, and identify some areas of improvement for your next event.

  2. Scoring. Hackers who participate in Member Events are earning points for their school in the MLH Season rankings. At the end of every Season, hackers can see how their schools performed against other schools and potentially win the MLH Season trophy to take back to their hacker club.

Requirements

MLH was built by passionate community members. To ensure that Member Events are as high quality as the hackathons we fell in love with, organizers must meet the following requirements:

Onboarding:

  1. Read and sign the Member Event agreement. All Member Event lead organizers are expected to read and sign the following documents to ensure that everyone is on the same page:

    a. Member Event Requirements & Benefits - This document outlines the things that we need you to do before, during, and after your hackathon and the things we’re doing for you as well.

    b. Community Values - This document presents a set of principles shared by every Member Event that serve as examples of excellence to your attendees and sponsors, as well as other hackathons and communities. All Member Events are expected to uphold these Community Values.

    c. Code of Conduct - This document contains the guidelines for expected behavior of all attendees (including volunteers, mentors, sponsors, organizers, judges, etc.) at MLH events. Having a single code of conduct that is used by every hackathon helps us ensure that MLH events are safe and inclusive spaces for everyone and that expectations for behavior and incident response remain consistent for people who attend multiple MLH events. As an organizer of a Member Event, you are expected to adopt, make publicly available, and enforce the MLH Code of Conduct. If an incident is reported, organizers must immediately involve the onsite MLH Representative or MLH Incidents Team who will work with you to follow our official incident response procedure.

  2. Registration Form. We require Member Events to update their registration form to include a set of basic fields and checkboxes. This ensures that we know who is attending Member Events and that attendees know what they are agreeing to. We do not collect, utilize, or share any personal information without an attendee opt-in.

    a. Contact / Demographic Info. Your registration form MUST ask for: first name, last name, email, school, and phone number. Optionally, we encourage you to also ask for: age, gender, race/ethnicity, major, current level of study, and expected graduation year.

    b. MLH Code of Conduct, Data Sharing, and Terms & Conditions Checkbox. Add a checkbox with the following language to your registration form: "I have read and agree to the MLH Code of Conduct. I authorize you to share my application/registration information for event administration, ranking, MLH administration, pre- and post-event informational e-mails, and occasional messages about hackathons in-line with the MLH Privacy Policy. I further agree to the terms of both the MLH Contest Terms and Conditions and the MLH Privacy Policy.”

    We have grouped these terms into a single checkbox for ease of setup and improved user experience. If your local laws require you to separate these terms (Ex. GDPR), you can find those checkbox requirements here.

  3. MLH Website Branding. On your hackathon’s website, you must display the MLH Season Trust Badge in the header and the MLH logo under your partners section. Hackers and sponsors see the presence of these logos and know that you have achieved the level of quality guaranteed by being a Member Event.  You can find these assets on our official Brand Guidelines.

  4. Brand License. We will include your event on the official Season schedule and promote it to our community, but we need your permission to do so. By signing this agreement, you grant MLH an indefinite license to use your event name, branding, and materials to market your event and the Season of Member Events. Additionally, we grant Member Events a non-exclusive license to use the MLH name and brand in conjunction with the event. MLH reserves the right to terminate the organizer's license at any time at our absolute discretion.

  5. Content Agreement. We love posting photos and videos of Member Events on our website and social media, but we can’t do that without your permission. Grant MLH permission to record and publish photos and video of the event and the right to produce commercial video content (this does not include TV news or sponsor/event recaps).

  6. Property Care Agreement. Member Events recognize that any MLH property they borrow (hardware, signage, mini-event supplies, etc.) will be used by other Member Events during the year. If any supplies are lost, damaged, or late, other events will be unable to utilize them. You agree to see that, to the best of your ability, all MLH property is cared for and returned on time by your hackers, organizers, sponsors, and volunteers.

Before your hackathon:

  1. Event Details. In order to send our staff and resources to your hackathon, we need you to submit the following information at least three (4) months before the event: a. Event start and end times b. Venue Address c. Package Shipping Address and point of contact (full name, email, address, and phone number) d. Loading Dock Address & Hours and point of contact (full name, email, address and phone number)

  1. Pre-Event Call. Attend a call with your MLH Community Manager about three (3) weeks before the event. We’ll use this time to review your final schedule, preview plans for demos and judging, and work through any other issues you are facing. We will also let you know who your MLH representative on site will be and what shipments and packages to expect from us.

  2. Prize List. Update your list of prizes to include any MLH categories (full list provided by your MLH Community Manager) and add "MLH Winner Pins" to the list of prizes that your top team’s receive. We partner with both Devpost and Hacker Earth to make this easier. As a result, by becoming a Member Event, your hackathon page may automatically include MLH branding, prizes, and/or allow us direct access.

  3. Registration Data. Submit all registration data to your MLH Community Manager no later than one (1) week prior your event’s start date. We use this data to 1) ensure that no repeat violators of the Code of Conduct are attending the event and 2) send attendees a pre-event email with info about the resources MLH is bringing to the event for them to use and 3) send an email asking them to opt-in to the MLH newsletter for future info about hackathons and the League. . If there are Code of Conduct issues with any attendees prior to the event, we will contact you for resolution.

During your hackathon:

  1. Opening Ceremony. Reserve 5 minutes for your MLH representative to speak (with slides) during opening ceremony and share any resources/swag available for your hackers to use during the hackathon.

  2. Closing Ceremony. Reserve 5 minutes during your closing ceremony for your MLH representative to make a few remarks on behalf of MLH and award prizes to the teams that won any MLH category prizes. As the overall winners of the event are announced, your MLH representative will help you distribute finalist pins to each of the teams and take photos of each winning team.

  3. MLH Table. Reserve a table (4x6 feet or 1.2x1.8 meters minimum) for your MLH representative to engage with attendees and distribute swag/credits (stickers, website domains, hosting credit, t-shirts, etc).

  4. Hardware Lab Table. Reserve a table (4x6 feet or 1.2x1.8 meters minimum) in a central place for the MLH Hardware Lab to operate. You will be expected to find and assign volunteers by time-shifts to manage the MLH Hardware Lab for the full duration of the event. By providing volunteers, our MLH rep will be freed up to help your organizing team and hackers with higher priority event support.

  5. Signage. Display MLH Season and directional signage in key areas during the event. Much like displaying the Trust Badge on your website, having MLH signage on-site during the event signals your commitment to hosting a high quality event and makes your attendees feel like they are part of a larger movement.

  6. Check-in. Allow your MLH representative to distribute MLH swag and promotional items at the attendee checkin area. Hackers love to receive swag and goodies. Distributing these at checkin creates a great first impression and ensures that everyone gets some.

  7. Mini-Event. Reserve a 1-hour block in your schedule (before 10pm) for your MLH representative to run a fun mini-event for attendees. Mini-events are a great way for participants to take a break and network with each other.

After your hackathon:

  1. Checkin & Submission Data. Submit all checkin and submissions data to your MLH Community Manager no later than one week after your event. We use this data to calculate Season rankings and to send attendees a post event survey to collect their feedback.

  2. Post-Event Call. Attend a call with your assigned MLH Community Manager about three weeks after the event. We’ll use this time to run a short retrospective on working together, provide feedback, and start planning for future events!

Major League Hacking reserves the right to revise, make exceptions to, or otherwise amend these policies in whole or in part. If you have any questions regarding these policies, please contact us by email at [email protected].

This guide was last updated on: May 1, 2019