Dribdat

Dribdat is an open-source, self-hosted platform for organising data-driven hackathons, ideation sprints and challenge boards. It provides a lightweight web frontend and API for announcing events, publishing challenges, forming teams and curating project outcomes.

Key Features

• Full event lifecycle: announce events, publish challenges, accept project submissions and showcase results
• Project curation and discovery: browse, filter and manage project entries with progress logs
• Data aggregation: automatic sync of project updates from Git, Forgejo and collaborative editors
• Integrations: connectors for Slack, Mattermost, Discord and other collaboration tools
• Alternative frontends: standard Bootstrap UI plus an optional Vue.js-based frontend (Backboard)
• Deployment options: configured for quick start with Docker Compose and production deployment using Ansible
• Database flexibility: example setups for SQLite (quick local installs) and production-ready databases
• Optional S3 upload support (uses boto3) for storing attachments

Use Cases

• Run civic-tech hackathons, ideation jams and community challenge events with participant, team and project management
• Curate and track multiple simultaneous projects during code sprints, hackdays or themed competitions
• Aggregate progress and artifact updates from code forges and collaborative editors into a single event dashboard

Limitations and Considerations

• Optional S3 support depends on boto3 and OpenSSL-related libraries; using S3 features may require additional native crypto dependencies
• The first registered user becomes an admin by default, which is important to account for during initial deployment

Dribdat is intended as a modular, extendable toolbox for organisers who want a self-hosted, integratable platform for challenge-driven events. It is suitable for quick local trials or full production deployments with a configurable backend and themable frontend.