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South African community-driven hackathon organiser HackOn has announced it wants to “Hack the Hackathon”, asking participants to innovate around the basic concept of unlocking value from hackathons.

According to HackOn, the Cape Town-based event was prompted by ongoing debate within the community around how and why hackathons should be run, who should run them, and who owns the innovation or intellectual property emanating from events.

As such, HackOn is inviting techies, creatives, experts, students, startups, and corporates to attend a novel hackathon which aims to “get back to basics on the actual hackathon itself”.

“I initially thought that the innovation and outcomes were the most important outcome [of hackathons], however, I started seeing hackathons as a tool to creating confidence, and finding innovations in that process was nice to have, but not the main outcome,” says Lianne du Toit, co-founder of HackOn.

“It feels that hackathons have become ‘all about the prize, the money, who is better’. So this day is dedicated to getting back to basics, having fun, and possibly reinventing how we use hackathons in the future.”

While some themes will be suggested on the day, attendees are encouraged to come up with their own ideas or areas to innovate around.

All learnings from the event will be shared, with the hope of putting South Africa on the map as an up-and-coming hackathon ecosystem.

Hack the Hackathon will be held at Workshop17, on October 29 from 9am. Registration is available here.

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