Life After Jaipur Hackathon

Linkedin Entry #1

A small spiel of a programmer after his first hackathon experience.

Dear Linkedin,

 There is a first time for everything, and this was my first time in a hackathon and you know what I'm loving it. It was a great experience being in a room filled with players of tech-battle-ground but after all the things that I carried back home matters the most. Things that really makes a change is seen in the result or the aftermath. So here is the list of all those things that I carried back in my bag of knowledge :

1. A Zeal to evolve.

it is said that, mind opens up under pressure and new thoughts flood in and among these you find your uncut diamond. When you realize its worth you start polishing it and add more value into it. And eventually a dream is built on the foundation of that diamond.

Something very similar happened with us, the codexDelta team. We found our uncut diamond in the form of an app that we built during the event. We felt that we should purse this and make sure that it evolves into a mature form. And thus we are on the track....

2. Working in a team.

Team, a vital part of the event, it is very important to form the best suited team for a hackathon because every team member works as an organ of a body. I learned the importance of coordinating and getting connected to other members of the team to make the points on the table clear and practical.

3. Networking

Hackathon is a great place for connecting people and building a network. You find people from various walks of life and it offers you a chance to get connected with them. Broader the network broader will be your scope.

4. Handling pressures and situations

I always agree to one thing, Strong are those who have undergone lots of pressure. In a hackathon everything needs to be fast and quick. There will be tremendous pressure on you while developing the product but the real reason is to make you and your idea bullet proof. Where is the trill if you cannot work under pressure.

There was a time during hackathon when it felt like everything is falling apart and nothing was making any sense, slowly doubt clouds were gathering around. What saved us was a driving thought to make it happen no matter what. Thanks to those distressing fun activities that we had @ midnight

5. Projecting the idea

You need to first realize the dimensions of your idea, its scope, its realizability, its practicality, its feasibility, its relevancy and make sure that you execute your idea in the given span of time. After all this interrogation with the idea you need to decide what and how much to project in front of other, because all ideas are great but in there respective time.

6. Creating an MVP

Most Viable Product (MVP), in simple short terms it means creating an end-to-end product with minimum features possible. After penning the dimensions of your idea all you got to do is trimming because one thing is clear you cannot create the whole product in 24 hrs so you need to cut-down those features which are not so relevant to project the idea behind the product.

The important point over here is to make sure that your end product projects the basic functionality of your idea because the time span during a hackathon is very short.

7. Priority-wise coding

after finalizing your MVP design you need to make sure that you code priority-wise because this will make sure that design of your project does not hinders due to illogical flow.

8. In the end a feeling of satisfaction

Winning is not important but being a part of something great is important and the satisfaction that follows after completing the whole project is unsharable. After all you created something of your own.

Participating in a hackathon is a clear shot way for innovation. I consider it to be the fastest way of creating something awesome. Don't miss any chance from where you can learn something great.