How to use a hackathon to it’s fullest?

INTERACT.

INTERACT.

INTERACT.

Well, actually I could end the blog post right now since that’s the most important thing that I have to tell you. But then, I ought to elaborate, shouldn’t I? :P

Interact

So, while hackathons usually encourage you to come alone and make a team with others having complementary skills, usually to avoid the anxiety of being the sole one without a team or perhaps to escape the whole stress of having to find and work with a team of complete strangers for the next 24 hours (and maybe even end up winning and probably working with them for the rest of eternity), people usually sign up for the hackathon tickets AFTER they have created a team of their closest friends and best programmers. While this happens, everyone is still very much encouraged to come alone and go back as part of the hack-family, because THAT creates a lot of interaction. And why interact? Because you never know where inspiration, ideas, innovation or maybe even, a future mentor or friend might come from.

Help others and let yourself be helped

Often you can see teams huddled in the corner, creating a makeshift battle-tent with beanbags or chairs, the drawing board and the table and maybe even have a couple of bouncer-like teammates as guards and all this for what? Just so that the neighboring team may not know their “really amazing billion dollar idea”. Well, that’s good. Just don’t scare away the mentors who will come in (through the security measures) to help you out or even the seasoned hackers who would be more than happy to guide you in the right direction, in case you are going tooooooo far off the mark (a little further away from the mark is actually good. More on that later). Help other teams when they need chargers or power plugs or converters or maybe even a sounding board. You’ll see that it does wonders to their morale and your harried state of mind.

SLEEP

This is very, very, very important for the newbies. If it’s your first hackathon and you feel you can’t do without sleep, Red Bull or coffee (or both together in a murky mess) may not be your best bet. Sleep, maybe for an hour, maybe a few hours. It doesn’t matter. Because if you don’t sleep, you’ll end up feeling pukish, tired, groggy, hangry (hungry & angry), annoyed….. basically like Frankenstein or something similar, by the next morning. Definitely not what you want to be. So give in to sleep. Just. Give. In. And sleep right, as in… not with a crooked neck position because I am not really sure that you would have enough time to rub out that crick in your neck the next day when you wake up 20 minutes (if you are lucky) before the submission deadline.

Know your team

If you have a team beforehand, then spend the time right up until the hackathon knowing your teammates’ strengths and weaknesses. You definitely do not want to push the best designer into making your slides all through the day and end up having a shabby design for your app. You do not want to make your coder sit up all night writing the pitch while someone else toils at the application coding. So, know your team. That would also help you make the best use of those last few minutes when everyone’s tasks need to be polished and not end up sitting around bickering about who should do what.

Have fun

Usually the most important one (other than having food at the right time and interacting and sleeping :P). Have fun and let others also have fun. Never be a spoilsport. Don’t try to copy other’s ideas because the mentors would know who started how and the judges are definitely not your average Joes. So, yeah.

I guess that’s all for now. If something else pops up, I’ll definitely make a note of it in this very post, so expect to see it change every time you come in for a read.