How to Data in Datathons
Datasets and Benchmarks Track
Authors: Carlos Mougan, Richard Plant, Clare Teng, Marya Bazzi, Alvaro Cabrejas Egea, Ryan Chan, David Salvador Jasin, Martin Stoffel, Kirstie Whitaker, JULES MANSER

The rise of datathons, also known as data or data science hackathons, has provided a platform to collaborate, learn, and innovate quickly. Despite their significant potential benefits, organizations often struggle to effectively work with data due to a lack of clear guidelines and best practices for potential issues that might arise. Drawing on our own experiences and insights from organizing +80 datathon challenges with +60 partnership organizations since 2016, we provide a guide that serves as a resource for organizers to navigate the data-related complexities of datathons. We apply our proposed framework to 10 case studies.