How I won a Raspberry Pi at my First Hackathon
It’s 6:45 AM. I’m 11 hours, 500 lines of code, and 8 Github commits deep. Until now, sleep hasn’t even been a thought thanks to the caffeinated AWAKE bars I’d consumed a few hours earlier. The wide-eyed owl on the packaging boldly reminds me, “1 bar = 1 cup of joe!”
This situation yields only one explanation: I’m smack dab in the middle of my first hackathon.
In this article, I’ll use my personal experience to shed light upon what a hackathon is and why everyone should become a participant.
First off: What’s a Hackathon?
Throw a bunch of curious, creative, talented, people into a confined area to “compete” and see what they create. This is a hackathon in a nutshell… it has judges and winners — yet finding a winner isn’t actually the goal.
For most, a hackathon is a place to meet like-minded individuals, learn new skills and technologies, and make something with other people.
I was invited to the weekend-long HackISU (Iowa State University) event by some friends from high school.
The First Hour
We arrived a little late, so many of the nicer workspaces were already taken. While presenters with microphones introduced the event, we scrambled, searching for a spot to set up camp.
The first hour was a time to form groups and generate ideas. For hackers still searching for a team, they announced, go to the conference room upstairs. As many people migrated out of the primary work room, our team had a good chance to focus and get started.
After we bounced several ideas around, I presented my idea for an app. Upon entering a hashtag, a tweet would appear containing some type of advice pertaining to the given hashtag. Though a boilerplate concept, we decided to run with it. A group member suggested the clever name TwitterWise, and off we went.
The Hackathon Environment
One of my biggest questions going in was, what is a hackathon like? What’s the general vibe… the look and feel? I was delighted to learn that it wasn’t an intense, competitive showdown. It was instead a setting which encouraged exploration, learning, and question-asking.
Long tables filled the room, scattered with power strips and extension cords. What jumped out at me the most, by far, was the abundance of computer stickers. The backs of everyone’s computers were colorful collages of tech brands and pop culture, and it was like nothing I’d ever seen before.
Snacks, Prizes, Giveaways 😍
The great thing about hackathons is, even if you do nothing, you’ll inevitably leave with some great stuff. Throughout the event, food is provided, along with late-night snacks and caffeinated beverages. Companies come to give away free trinkets, stickers, and apparel.
The amount of free gear available is astonishing — if nothing else motivates you to join a hackathon, let that sink in.
I came home with a cute Android keychain and a T-shirt from a company called Spreetail.
Judging and Prizes
I stayed up until 7 AM the first night, then slept on the floor upstairs until noon. I worked again until midnight, and woke up at 6 AM to add some finishing touches before the deadline. Finally, it was time for judging.
Though I’d spent quite a bit of effort building the TwitterWise Android app, I couldn’t quite finish in time to get it working with the backend service another teammate had been working on.
Despite this shortcoming, when it came time for the judges to come around and discuss our team’s creation, it was nice to have a presentable mobile interface for them to interact with.
The Raspberry Pi
After a lengthy period of waiting around during judging, there was a closing ceremony which announced the winners. Of the 71 projects submitted, 16 won an award, some of which included:
- Best Machine Vision App
- Best Retail-Focused Hack
- Best Use of Cloud Technology
Ironically, we ended up winning Raspberry Pis — not based on the merits of our creation, but instead on the character of our project’s name.
We won the award for Best Domain Name. Although we weren’t awarded on the basis of our technical competency or innovation, it still felt kinda good to walk up to the front of the stage and be crowned “winners.”
Conclusions
I won a Raspberry Pi at my first hackathon, and admittedly, it had nothing to do with me or my performance.
But before you lose faith in the legitimacy of this “How to” article, take the following into account: had I not made the decision to be a part of this event, I would have missed out on the experience of building an Android application from scratch, as well as the collaboration and team-based adventure that is building something from concept to reality.
The real value I gained was not the award I won, but the experience of working with a group to generate a software concept then execute on it.
TwitterWise is not a completed app on the Google Play store and possibly never will be, yet the work and team experience I acquired during the event is something that I’ll never lose.
It is exceptionally valuable for computer science students of all levels to have experience building a project in a team environment. I encourage everyone, regardless of your technical confidence, to at least try participating in one hackathon — you never know what might come out of it.
To learn more about hackathons and find events to be a part of, I recommend exploring the Major League Hacking official website. To find hackathon projects from thousands of teams all over the country, check out Devpost.
Let me know what you think!
Please leave any questions you have in the comments. If you have experience with hackathons, I’d love to hear about them, and those who are on the fence about attending one for themselves would benefit greatly from your perspective.
Thanks for reading!
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