How to be a mentor at an afternoon hackathon

The foundation of good mentorship is to understand who your learners are and how they experience the process.

The first step is to empathize with the users to understand their profile and context:

• what kind of expertise they have,
• which industry they come from,
• what they are currently working on,
• what ideas or projects they have that they would like to bring to fruition.

Not everyone is an entrepreneur, nor do they know what a startup is; there are even people who work in technology and don't know what a hackathon is, and that's normal.

Putting yourself in the participant's shoes, understanding their motivations, background, and concerns, allows you to identify their pain points and needs.

For mentorship to work, participants must feel confident and know that they can make mistakes. Many people here are learning to create a product, design an information system, and use a tool, all at the same time. It's magical, and yet there are many things one doesn't know (because we don't know what we don't know).

Foster a safe environment and respect the participants' agency: rather than telling them what to do from start to finish, asking them questions will help them gain confidence and autonomy.

Our role as facilitators is not to teach, but to orchestrate work and action. Even if you know a lot about design, development, or using a tool like Lovable, the goal is to facilitate others' learning. Sometimes that means asking them questions, not necessarily giving them all the answers, for example regarding the product design itself.

The way you correct or guide teams can define their success or frustration.

Quality over quantity: It's difficult to process too much feedback. When reviewing a project, identify only two or three priority areas for improvement or general trends. Don't overwhelm the person with a list of corrections or possible future actions.

Don't obsess over perfection: Focus on the big picture and the thought process, not on creating all the functionalities or all the content of the project that each participant is developing right now.

Avoid technical jargon, especially with people who are developing a software product for the first time and have never written a functional requirement. Most people don't have to know what a backend is.

The world of information system development is complex. Although website design and creation is increasingly a commodity, for many people it remains an abstract world; perhaps due to its intangible nature, as —unlike a physical product that one can disassemble— understanding what lies behind a software product requires a greater capacity for abstraction.

However, vibe coding and particularly a user-friendly platform like Lovable, makes the design and development of websites, apps, and information systems in general, more accessible to people.

At least initially, for those who are discovering both the tool and the software development process, encourage practical learning: guide teams to move forward, test results, and then improve along the way. It is much faster and more educational than trying to plan everything perfectly from the start.

Conduct proactive "check-ins": Don't wait for participants to ask for help (the most insecure ones are often the least likely to ask). Sometimes just asking:

How's everything going? How can I help you?

…is super effective.