The Art of Conquering Hackathons
“Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.” — Mahatma Gandhi
There is a very specific reason I went with this particular quote by Gandhi on victory. I am might get a bit philosophical bear with me on this, trust me it will be worth your time.
I expect you have attended a couple of hackathons or some event of a similar kind and planning to improve.
First things first Victories have a different meaning to different people, or often might become different for later you.
Let me try to make a list of goals that might help you conquer hackathons
Goal 1: Introduction and Understanding hackathons
If you are going to attend your first hackathon, your goal for that hackathon might be to get an idea about the hackathon, talk to sponsors and hackers there make a team maybe and build your first app. Here your victory is getting started into hackathons
Here you get your first taste of conquering hackathon.
Finding Nemo (in your case, a wolf pack)
So what's next for you? On your first few hackathons, if you are lucky enough to find the right team members who share your vibes and passion. Then you can start getting serious and build some good projects but if you are not lucky enough, you might be still trying to convince your friends or getting a bit bored of it and might be thinking of quitting ( Don't).
I found my team after ten or more hackathons. And now I do almost all my projects with that team even planning to do my master's in the same college as them. I call this team a wolf pack. For people who haven't heard the term wolf pack, it means something like this A group of friends bonded together by loyalty and respect for each other. Once in a wolfpack, you are genuinely devoted to your pack. It is expected that the wolfpack to protect each other.
I personally feel everybody needs a wolf pack of their own, a group of 4–5 people with shared interests and goals working and helping each other grow together, and hackathons give you the best opportunity to meet and form this pack.
Don't quit keep trying, make use of the chat channel in the hackathon be it Discord or Slack, or any other platform talk, and make as much contact as possible. It would be a great learning and humbling experience.
Anything can happen over a professional conversation, keep the chat respectful and have a learn-it attitude.
Enough of talking. Let's work
Do you have a team? That's cool to start building.
No? Then hear me out
There is no fixed rule or way to build a winning team. I have seen a team with all coders loose and team with programmer and rest design, medical win so tbh there is no perfect team.
The ideas and the way you manage time matter a lot.
Ideally, a team should have one Fullstack developer or an android /ios developer, A designer, a Team leader, and DevOpers.
But I say don't stick to any pre-kept layout but go out there and explore and meet your wolf pack.
Tip: Many virtual hackathons now have their space set up on discord or slack, so try to get familiar with it.
Once you have found 3–4 amazing folks, it's time to brainstorm.
Time to think
Before the brainstorming session, has a small icebreaker to make the brainstorming a bit smooth.
Once you have decided to come up with a hack, get a document or text file ready. Remember this: “Solve one problem at a time, don't try to build a Facebook in 2 days” One of the solid pieces of advice I got from a judge at one of my hackathons
The thing is, when we ideate, we think about all the fantastic features, we are used to playing around with well-structured and designed apps that we try to create something like them, but you see those apps are developed and maintained by a team of experts over weeks and months.
When you try to come up with an idea to win a hackathon, you first need to decide what the win is; often, hackathons have multiple themes, tracks, and general prizes. Having a clear understanding of what you are trying to build and the prize, you are aiming for helps you think in the right direction.
Once you decided on the track or theme, you want to build, try to find problems in that area, and try to relate them to your real life. Right away, don't google problems to solve in _______. Try to recount life incidents where you met with an obstacle that you can solve through technology. Example app to keep track of multiple swags that have been sent from multiple hackathons.
Once you know what you want to build, put that in a text and try to explain what you want to achieve and how. Try to figure out the tech stack needed and the necessary data required. All this has to be done 1 or 2 days before hackathons.
Finding the right data might always be an issue, so you are better off knowing its availability before the hackathon starts.
I highly suggest building a to-do app or something to know what your team can pull off. It's like a mock test to see where you stand.
Once the Idea is ready, it's time to plan.
Let's make a Blue Print
Once the idea is set, it's time to break the app into small components and split it among teammates. I would highly suggest the Kanban board for this purpose. Try out the Github Project board for this purpose. If you want to go a bit fancy, you can use Azure DevOps too
Every component can be made into an issue and your teammates can assign it to themself and start working on it This reduces tons of confusion and reduces time wasted. Once in a while have a team call to take a small break talk about some pesky bugs or drink coffee.
Having a good understanding of Github is a must. The tools and project boards are amazing, makes the deployment process much easier since almost all cloud providers allow you to deploy your application directly from Github
For hackathons, the GitHub Student Developer pack is a blessing.
Once the plan is set, work split its time to work
All work and Coffee
Now, remember, not all hackathons allow you to start the work before the hackathon; if you still have time before the hackathon starts you can start looking up the tools and frameworks you might wanna use and start learning them.
It's hard for you to know everything before a hackathon. Hackathon is a great place to learn the time constraint is a major factor that will stop you from procrastinating. I learned my first framework, CSS, a bit of C# at hackathons even tools and products like Figma, MongoDB, etc
I started Learning at hackathons. I learn a lot during the 2 days rather than compared to an entire week. Also if you don't know something, be honest with your team cause they can plan accordingly.
So I usually make my workspace filled with things I will need so that I don't have to move for a couple of hours. For me getting in the zone is a significant issue so I take long work hours and long breaks between them, like 3–4 hrs, then 30 minutes breaks.
Let me share some tips I use during hackathons that have saved me a lot of time and effort:
- Start with documentation avoid youtube: often when you use new tools that you have never used until now, it might seem a bit intimidating but take one step at a time refer to the docs and the example provided in it. that will set you up for most of the basic stuff if you still need help use Blogs if that doesn't solve the issue for you then move on to the community forums then youtube. The reason why I am not a big fan of youtube is that 1 its too distracting (for me) and I often end up wasting time 2) I am not able to skip and have to watch the entire video for the info I needed which is 4 sec in the entire 4-minute video. I am not saying youtube is not useful rather I am saying start with Doc and Blogs since I feel they save a lot of time.
- Search on Github: Here is a tip, some of you might know most of the companies that sponsor hackathons have their products developed on GitHub as an open-source product or at least have tons of examples. Github is an amazing place to learn if you use it correctly here are the things you can do.
- Issues are a great place to look for some command issues, reading through the conversation often helps me fix my issues.
- Often there is Project used by the Section where public repositories/projects that use this part are listed, These projects are an amazing resource for you to learn from. I learned a lot of good practices from these projects, some amazing developers add comments on their code, making it super easy to learn. Don't just copy-paste code from these projects, if you wish to use the code check the license, credit them properly on your project, and send a mail to the maintainer if possible.
Having an SME (Subject matter Expert) helps a lot when you work on an Application catering to the needs of a particular field that your team is not familiar with.
Roll Camera Action
Your team has finished building the Application? Amazing it's time to pitch your idea and demo the app.
This is where many people go wrong, a lot of time we focus too much on the application development You won't have enough time to pitch and demo the application.
Start preparing for the video or live presentation at least 2 hrs before the deadline. This will give you enough time space to make the video, edit it and publish it.
Remember, First impressions last, and this video is Judge’s first impression about your idea and application, make it well but go easy on edits.
Keep it Simple.
Make sure you have a script written up and video recorded in a professional way with fewer sound disturbances. A lot of time doing a small test with your friends will help you gain insights into your application that missed your eyes.
Once the video is done make sure you submit it on time and then you can get yourself a big cup of coffee or maybe some sleep until the Result is announced.
Hackathons at first can be a very tiring process but it's a great learning environment. When you go to a hackathon make sure you give the entire 48 hrs of 24 hrs to it.
Good Luck, May the best hack win.
If your hack doesn't win don't worry, try to gain feedback and keep working on the application and try again.
If you like this article read more about my other articles here: https://anush-venkatakrishna.medium.com/
