Eventornado

Eventornado is hackathon software for running events online, in person or from anywhere, positioned around teams coming together and ideas being generated rather than around administration.

That emphasis on team formation is the right one, and it is the part of hackathon organisation that software most often neglects. Registration and submission are solved problems. Getting a room full of individuals into functional teams is not, and it determines whether an event produces anything. People arrive alone with an idea and no skills to build it, or with skills and no idea, and the process of finding each other in the first two hours is where events succeed or fail.

Online and hybrid events make that considerably harder, since the informal milling about that produces teams in a physical room does not happen on a video call. Software has to substitute for the corridor, which means idea boards, skill matching and a visible directory of who is looking for whom.

Published events running on the platform include a UNFPA youth climate data challenge, which suggests use beyond corporate innovation into public sector and non-governmental programmes. Those events have different characteristics: participants distributed across many countries and time zones, prize funds published in advance, and outcomes reported to funders.

The platform is presented as the easiest way to organise a hackathon, with demos bookable directly.

Pricing is not published, which is normal where events vary enormously in size and duration and pricing is usually per event rather than per subscription.