Hack the Hackathon

Hey, I’m Vikas, a 3rd-year student from Ramaiah Institute of Technology. I have been to more than 10 hackathons hosted by companies like Amazon, Google, Visteon, etc. In this article, I would like to shed some light on what hackathons are, benefits of participating in hackathons and finally how to win hackathons.

What is a hackathon?

   Hackathon is a coding competition which involves students as well as software developers mostly for 24 to 48 hours wherein participants are required to build a prototype and present it to judges for a given problem statement. For instance “Women Safety” was the problem statement at the Hackathon by Visteon. Some hackathons are “Open Innovation” meaning there is no restriction on the domain or problem statement. Some online hackathons last for 2-3 months involving rounds such as quiz, ideation, implementation, presentation, etc. This was the structure in Amazon AWS Educate Challenge.

Why participate in a hackathon?

1. Lots to Learn It helps us to learn to work under pressure in a limited time frame which is the case once we start working. In other words, it prepares us for the Corporate work culture. Also, hackathons help us to improve team management and communication skills.
2. Platform to showcase Talent Hackathons is a really good opportunity to showcase our coding skills as it happened in my case. I wasn’t that interested in academics but was very skilled in programming. Thus, for me, hackathons were like outlets to exhibit my skills.
3. Internships and Jobs Some companies use hackathons for talent acquisition. I got my first internship through a hackathon by Visteon.
4. Prizes Most hackathons offer cash prizes for winning teams. Prizes could range from 1,000 rs up to 10,00,000 rs. 10,000rs was the prize amount in CODEFURRY by Visteon while it was 1,00,000rs in Smart India Hackathon. Sometimes goodies as offered as complementary prizes.
5. Networking It is the best place to connect with people. It could be someone who is interested in the same domain as you are or an employee of the organizing company. Networking plays an important role in getting funds for projects and also while applying for jobs and internships.
6. Swags Last but not least, goodies such as T-shirts, water bottles, bags are given in most hackathons.

How to win a hackathon?

1. Equal importance for Planning and Presentation Given the limited time frame most of us dive directly into the development of neglecting planning and presentation. Planning is wherein we come up with innovative ideas to stand out among the crowd while Presentation is where we make the judges understand our work. Innovative ideas can win hackathons. In CODEFURRY by Visteon, “Women safety” was the problem statement. Everyone started to develop the app with the given requirements. But our team came up with an Alexa skill which stole the show and helped us to win the hackathon.
2. Holding on to nerves During the hackathons there will be a lot of ups and downs. Sometimes everything will start crashing as it happened in CODEFURRY for my team. At one point in time, we thought of walking out of the venue to avoid embarrassment. That would have been a great mistake as we went on to win that hackathon. And also if the first round doesn’t go well we should not give up and continue to work. So it is very important to keep calm and to continue working and develop never give up attitude.
3. Use trending technologies One thing I have observed in my hackathon journey is in most cases winning teams would have incorporated technologies such as Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Blockchain, etc. This gives extra points to those teams. Additional brownie points can be obtained by incorporating products of the organizing company, for example, API’s.

Conclusion

1. It’s more than winning the hackathons After starting with hattrick hackathons victories I met with a disastrous 4 losses. I was disappointed and embarrassed to the core as I took these hackathons personally. So it is very important to understand that at the end of the day it's just a hackathon, win or lose we should take it easy and realize there is always another hackathon coming up.! Does Sachin always score a century? Does India always win? Just like this, we may not win all the time and it is very important to develop a competitive spirit.
2. Don’t carry forward Bad coding habits Given the limited time frame during the hackathon it's fine to write least secure and least maintainable code. But these are very much discouraged in companies which I realized only after my internship at Visteon. So it's very much important to ensure we don’t inculcate these habits in day to day coding.

Links

few of my projects to get an idea about what to build during Hackathons.

1. Meri Suraksha : https://youtu.be/4eaR58awMDg
2. Emotion Connect : https://youtu.be/NOukRmxe4Ac