👋 Welcome!

Hack Chicago was a 24-hour high school hackathon that took place in July, 2018. With over $25,000 in cash sponsorship, 250 students in attendance, 40 projects created, it was the Midwest's largest high school hackathon. Visit our 2018 event website: https://2018.hackchicago.io.

After the event, we moved on to create Execute Big, a non-profit organization born from Hack Chicago's resources, aiming to help more students, leaders and schools utilize our resources to support, join, and lead innovative programs.

We hope by putting together our knowledge as event organizers into Hack Chicago Archives, we can help your event become successful as well. Good luck with your own event!


Progress Tracker

📚 Archives

Click on each category to navigate throughout the archives. You can always return to the previous level by clicking on the back button, or use the breadcrumbs in the top left corner. You can also search the archives with the search bar in the top right corner.

Event Showcase

Timeline

Leadership

Marketing

Budget & Fundraising

Day-of Management

Post-Event

🙋‍♀️ FAQ

What are the archives?

This is a documentation of how Hack Chicago was put together. It includes dozens of stories, resources, and tips — some exclusive to Hack Chicago as an event, others might be helpful for all new hackathon organizers. We hope that this can be a helpful resource to help more high school students run fun, impactful and high quality events in areas where events like hackathons are not as popular.

All information included in the archives are 100% real. In some places, we might have redacted out some information for security and privacy purposes, but most of the documents, conversations logs, and finances are completely authentic — they made Hack Chicago happen.

Is this actively maintained?

The archives are still work in progress. Frankly, it has been two years, and it takes a while for us to recall the details of each task, and find the respective resources. The team is currently actively constructing putting the resources together, so please bear with us.

Once the archives is completed, it will not be actively updated except for minor accuracy edits and corrections.

Who is behind the archives?

This archive is a legacy project put together by the Execute Big Team, who are also the co-executive directors of Hack Chicago. These content are hosted as Execute Big's properties.