How would you raise awareness and build marketing around AI Hackathon (offline event)?

For almost 3 or 4 months, there was an idea to create an offline event (Hackathon) where makers could work in a team, network and partially launch a product on Product Hunt (if it is good).

Time is ticking, and I + 2 other guys, are working relentlessly on our first event in the capital city of my country.

We haven't met each other in person, but it feels like a right click – we complement each other, getting sponsors, first registered attendees, etc.

We wanna make this event a bit special in terms of raising awareness, and wanna find ways to do that.

If you ever organised an offline event, how did you promote it?

We implemented "ordinary" things like social media, email campaigns, collaborations with venue owner and the specialty is to use physical flags with the logo across the city to spark some FOMO.

Do you have something more "eye-opening" in your mind you would like to share?