My first experience with hackathons:-

At the start of the session, I decided to attend a hackathon because it is something I have been wanting to do for a long time. The chance to meet and work with a bunch of talented people was really exciting. We learn how to pitch a great new tech idea,and how to team build that concept in a short period of time. These ideas often turn into marketable products, and a number of successful products and companies have started at hackathons.

For my first hackathon ever, I decided to attend GenHax, organized by Invincix, in Bhubaneswar. There were 3 of us that created team House Stark. Including team House Stark there were 9 teams, who made it to the final round.

And it begins…

The teams arrived in the building of Invincix and were welcomed by the volunteers and representatives. It was the friendly and colorful environment there which attracted our attention. Each team had to choose one of the three given problem statements:-

• Waste management
• Medical emergency
• Culture and heritage

It started with a brainstorming session, our team decided to work on waste management and played many roles throughout the next 24 hours.

Our vision…

The vision of House Stark was to create a simple web app which will facilitate the user to post or share the location and pictures of the garbage or waste materials. The user then gets the liberty to decide whether he wants to recycle the waste by himself or he wants to sell it to the buyer. Buyers are the local industries or individuals who will be using this waste as raw material.

By this, we aimed to minimize the amount of waste being dumped in the dump-yards every month and we tried to provide a portal which will facilitate the waste management more efficiently.

Strategy…

We had one person focus on Node-js and MongoDB completely and the both of us working with UI. I had developed many websites before but most of the responsibilities dealt with the front-end of the site. I was working with HTML, CSS and Bootstrap. I had to create the login, sign-up, timeline and score pages. My teammates gave me a high-level overview of the technologies I would be working with. This gave me an understanding of how I can accomplish my task for House Stark.

Trouble arises…

It was about 2:00 AM when we realized we have spent too much time on little details and not enough time on a minimum viable demo. We had attempted to add too many features. It started to get too late and none of us had started to merge our code together. It was 5:30 AM in the morning when we had merged all our codes together. Finally, there was a sign of relief in our faces.

The final hour…

We presented a working demo along with a power point presentation. The results were announced and team House Stark was lifting the winning cup. The sleepless night, liters of coffee and the hard work paid off. It was a fantastic experience for the participants and the observers.

Hackathons help us in building a better portfolio, boosting confidence, gaining teamwork experience, ideation pitching and improving our communication skills.

Some tips…

• Don’t be scared to register as an individual and then join a team. Most hackathons have a team formation room for people to join teams after checking in.
• Always opt for healthy snacks. Hackathons take a lot of energy, both mentally and physically, so the best thing we can do for our body is to fuel it properly.
• Ask for help, ask for help and yes, ask for help. Hackathons give us access to individuals with years of experience across many different fields and areas. Be sure to take advantage of it.
• Hackathons are fantastic opportunity to learn new skills, sharpen existing ones and meet people in the industry.
• Talk with other teams. Hackathons are so much more than a competition.
• Even if you are not in the job seeking mode, it’s important to build a good networking with the sponsors.
• Always value the experience, don’t panic if the project doesn’t work out.

It is a must have experience. Looking forward to my next hackathon experience.