Months ago I told myself I’d create a How to Tool for developing Hacks in rural areas. Then I got busy and distracted but sometimes that’s a good thing. I realized that there was no need to recreate the wheel. Instead of creating another wheel, I’ve compiled a bibliography of wheels that I thought were pretty darned good.

I’ve been involved with hack in metro and rural areas. These mostly focus on hack in general, which by default means urban. But I have links to some of our rural Minnesota events that will give a flavor of rural. I think the main difference is critical mass. It’s easy to get more people to attend an event in the Cities – I think that’s true whether you’re talking about a Hack, a concert or a wedding. But it can be easier to get to local media and schools to promote the event in a rural setting. And of course you might promote to techies (or others) in the Cities to attend the event. You might spread the word via Open Twin Cities, Nonprofit Tech Talk, Open Minnesota – maybe others have suggestions they want to add to the comments below.

Otherwise, here’s the bibliography (you can download it in Word too):

Hack Bibliography

Explaining Hacks to Others

• A video from the Hack for MN 2013
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcN0WAnllvM
• Stories of Minnesota Hacks
  • Hack 2.o in Willmar http://wp.me/p3if7-3eY
  • Red Hot Hack (in Red Wing) http://wp.me/p3if7-34c
  • Twin Cities Unconference and Hackathon http://wp.me/p3if7-2sR

Tactical Checklists

• Socrata How to Run a Hackathon
  http://www.socrata.com/open-data-field-guide/how-to-run-a-hackathon/
  A practical guide to organizing a Hack, including an example schedule
• Hosting Hackathons: The Organizer’s Checklist
  http://alexeymk.com/hosting-hackathons-the-organizers-checklist/
  This is a good timeline of practical tasks. This list focuses on reaching students and the author received a lot of University support, which may be helpful if you are working under similar circumstances.
• 10 Tips for Hackathon success
  http://www.appsembler.com/blog/10-tips-for-hackathon-success/
  This article gets into the technical details of the Hack: API, CSS, GitHub and others.

Strategizing for Hacks

• 8 Best Practices for Running a Successful Hackathon
  http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2014/01/29/8-best-practices-running-successful-company-hackathon/
  Lessons learned from planners who have organized successful hacks.
• How to Organize a Hackathon: 6 Key Tips
  http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-organize-a-hackathon-6-key-tips/
  A good overview on how to strategize for a Hack and create appropriate goals.