Reclaim Hackathon

Build the alternative, not the critique

Reclaim asks participants to build alternatives to centralised platforms using open protocols. That framing is deliberate: it is easy to run an event where people criticise the platforms they use every day, and much harder to run one where they leave having built something that works differently.

My part was the shape of it — the technical tracks, the vision, the platform the event runs on, and the workshops that get people from "decentralisation sounds good" to a specific idea they can start on.

Most participants are students working with deliberately niche technologies they have never touched. Watching that happen taught me more about onboarding than any product I have shipped.

An unfamiliar interaction model needs a surprising amount of explanation before anyone is comfortable enough to commit to it — and the explanation is not documentation. It is the first ten minutes of using the thing. People do not adopt a protocol because it is better in principle; they adopt it once they trust that they understand what it is doing on their behalf.

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