Supporting High School Hackathons

We see high school hackathons as an excellent way to empower students to explore careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Specifically, we believe that hackathons can not only help students identify interests in technical fields such as engineering, but can also help students gain exposure to non-technical jobs in the tech sector such as product management.

We believe that product management education companies like Product Teacher have a crucial role to play in hackathons.

Below, we discuss the value of hackathons for high school students, and we identify opportunities where high school hackathons can drive more inclusivity by including product management tracks alongside programming tracks. We conclude by sharing our first steps in backing high school hackathons.

Note that for our discussion below, we are keeping corporate internal hackathons out of scope, as corporate hackathons tend to have stronger product management resources. We will also not cover other kinds of student competitions such as pitch competitions or case competitions.

The value of high school hackathons

A hackathon is an event in which a group of people collaborate intensively on projects within tightly constrained timelines. High school hackathons typically last anywhere from several hours to a few days, and students work together in teams to create innovative solutions. The goal of a hackathon is to help students develop skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, and collaboration, as well as gain exposure to a variety of technologies, tools, and platforms.

Hackathons have become an increasingly popular and powerful way for students to express their creativity, network, and build their knowledge and skills. Many students join hackathons as a way to gain hands-on experience, network, and potentially even land internships or job offers.

Student projects may range from a simple website or mobile app to a complex machine learning model or a virtual reality project. During the event, participants are provided with resources, mentorship, and support from experienced professionals and industry leaders. The best performing teams are recognized for their efforts and can win prizes for their submissions.

For students, hackathons provide an opportunity to test their limits and expand their technical knowledge. Students also gain exposure to professionals and industry experts, and can practice real-world problem solving skills. Additionally, hackathons can provide students with the opportunity to network with potential employers and gain relevant working experiences.

High school hackathons also benefit society as a whole. Hackathons provide an effective platform to promote collaboration and innovation within communities. By bringing together people of different backgrounds, hackathons help to create an inclusive and diverse environment in which students feel comfortable taking risks and pushing their boundaries. And, hackathons help to reduce the digital divide by providing students of all backgrounds with access to resources and mentors that they wouldn't otherwise have. 

Given the value that high school hackathons provide for students, we believe that it’s crucial to incorporate product management skills into these events.

The argument for product management as a part of hackathons

While more and more high school students are taking advantage of hackathons, many of these hackathons focus heavily on coding and programming, with the goal of creating a tech project from scratch in a short amount of time. While this narrow focus has its benefits, we believe there’s an even better way to run hackathons for high schoolers.

Specifically, we believe that product management should be a core pillar of any hackathon because it has the potential to help participants create better, more successful tech projects to share with judges and future employers.

First, product management can help hackathon participants better understand how to come up with ideas that create real-world value. When participants learn how to uncover customer needs, how to position their product’s value proposition, and how to consider future iterations, they are more likely to create a winning submission.

By providing participants with access to product management mindsets, principles, and frameworks, we can help better equip them to create solutions that address tangible customer needs, which helps them stand out to future employers and gives them the opportunity to create immediate value within their communities.

And, exposure to product management thinking can help participants better understand the importance of the user experience and the customer journey. An overly-narrow focus on coding and programming can cause even the most promising idea to fail to gain traction. Conversely, by incorporating UX considerations into their projects to provide an intuitive user interface, students are more likely to convince others to use their projects, which encourages them to take pride in their accomplishments.

Without a good understanding of user experience, it can be difficult for students to demo their projects effectively and perform well in the hackathon. Product management can help participants understand the importance of user experience and create projects that are easier for prospective users to adopt into their workflows and lives.

As leaders, we need to keep in mind that not all code creates value. When students create code that might be interesting to them but fails to gain appreciation from judges or from customers, they may lose interest in programming as a long-term career path. 

Consider this fact: even full-time engineers and software developers can experience frustration and burnout when their code fails to address customer pain and make customers excited. 

Therefore, it’s crucial that we give high school students the highest chance for their project ideas to solve a real-world need and create user excitement. Otherwise, they may lose interest in STEM, as they may feel that technical skills don’t connect to their identities or their goals.

On top of that, some students simply don’t want to code or are not comfortable coding. They may prefer to identify the market relevance of a given idea; that is, they may want to collaborate with students who code but may not have the ability or desire to code themselves.

This kind of user-focused, business-focused role should be encouraged. The goal of a hackathon should be to let high school students explore careers in technology, without necessarily constraining them solely to programming-only roles.

That is why we are eager to partner with high school hackathons. By doing so, we can design a more inclusive experience that empowers student teams to deliver real-world impact and energizes students to take a leadership role in their communities, rather than working on abstract technical concepts that may not have real-world relevance.

Our initial forays into supporting high school hackathons

We believe that the best way to ensure that employers have access to strong product management talent is to strengthen the pipeline as early as possible. Therefore, we are committed to supporting high school hackathons by providing product management training. 

When hackathon participants gain exposure to product management principles and skills, they will be able to carry these with them wherever they go, whether they decide to pursue a career in STEM or in a different career field.

We’re proud to share that we are sponsoring Los Altos Hacks, one of the largest high school hackathons globally. Organizers have been hosting this event since 2016; and, since their founding, they have sought to maintain a 50:50 gender ratio and ensure that students of all backgrounds can have the opportunity to become inspired to pursue a career in STEM.

This hackathon is a 24-hour event that encourages high school students to work together to create hardware and software projects. Teams of up to four students will be given a theme and challenged to create a working prototype of a product that they can present to judges. The hackathon offers mentoring and workshops to help students develop their ideas and hone their skills, while also providing social events like capture the flag and video game tournaments.

This hackathon is an amazing opportunity for high school students to get hands-on experience in tech. We’re proud to invest our resources to support the hackathon and its participants. This partnership comes as part of Product Teacher’s ongoing commitment to fostering innovation and cultivating the next generation of product professionals. 

As part of the sponsorship, Product Teacher will provide resources for the hackathon, including mentorship for teams as well as competition prizes. Our award-winning coaching staff will provide tutorials on how to run user interviews and how to craft compelling pitches. 

We believe in the power of collaboration, and this event will give students a chance to use their problem solving skills and come up with creative solutions to real-world problems. We’re also excited to be able to provide resources and support to help the participants develop their projects and learn more about product management.

We see this sponsorship as the first step of many to providing scalable resources to high school hackathon organizers all over the world. We envision a world where organizers can easily gain access to a self-serve package of on-demand product management training resources for their participants, including how to pitch, how to run user interviews, how to prototype, and more.

Through these scalable resources, we can help organizers provide in-demand skills to students, empower teams to present better ideas to judges, and provide stronger ROI to corporate sponsors - all without being bottlenecked by our availability to provide live training.

Increasing our long-term support and presence in hackathons

If you are a high school hackathon organizer and would like to partner with Product Teacher, please reach out to admin@productteacher.com. We’d love to find ways to collaborate and provide value for your participants and your corporate sponsors.

We’re eager to make product management easier for everyone, and we believe this work should begin as early as high school. Thank you for supporting our mission!