Hackathon….what’s a hackathon?
This may as well have been my reaction when I found out about the Chamber of Digital Commerce Blockchain Code-a-Thon in DC. I’ve been immersed in blockchain for about a year now — and even taught myself how to code — but this was my first hackathon (sometimes referred to as code-a-thon because, well…yeah, I’ll let your imagination run here).
Although it was my first hackathon, I was proactive, open-minded, and aware— from the moment I registered to the moment that my team placed third. I believe this was the secret sauce to my success.
Paving my path
I may have not known what to expect, but I knew I had to prepare.
If there was one thing I learned from my years in consulting, it’s the importance of preparation. I knew what I had to do.
Here I come!
I was the 3rd person to join the Slack channel, the hackathon’s primary communication platform, trailing just behind the two event organizers.
I checked the channel regularly over the next few weeks but there was little activity. Searching for answers, I read online that the key to hackathon success is a strong and balanced team. Awesome! Except I still didn’t have a team…
Aha — I had an idea! I would create a “findteam” channel within the broader Slack group, the sole purpose of which would be to help myself and others find teammates.
The ball was set in motion…
Two participants wrote that they’re looking for a team. I immediately messaged them both and suggested we consider working together. After briefly discussing our skills, we realized that we’re a good match. However, we needed one more developer.
Alright, back to the “findteam” channel I go. I noticed a post from Sal, who said that he has a business/economics/finance background and is a python coder….this was a no-brainer! After vetting him on Linkedin, I reached out and provided an overview of my team’s skills, proceeding to ask him if he would like to join us. He said yes!
What now?
I quickly introduced him to the rest of the team and brought up the need to start brainstorming ideas.
The team agreed. After some ideating, one of the team members, Daniel, comes up with the idea that we ultimately end up building: a decentralized application to detect election tampering. Our goal would be to restore voter confidence in our election process. Perfect! The idea is practical and very much-needed, as we all know, from the uncertainty surrounding the 2016 election.
You can access our github repository to see exactly what we built and how (see the section down below), but for now, let’s dive straight into the first day of the hackathon.
Day 1 — design, build, test. Rinse and repeat
At 8am, I take an Uber from my hotel to Georgetown University. I enter the building, sign-in, grab a t-shirt, and have a seat in the main room. Of course, I also message my team to let them know that I’ve arrived. I happen to grab a seat next to a woman who is a reporter from Coindesk…hey, this is pretty cool!
Not much time passes before my team starts trickling in. We greet each other and without wasting too much time, start talking about our idea. We notice, however, that one of our team members has been missing. Hmmm…where’s our teammate?
The obstacles begin
She lets us know that she’ll be joining another team. No big deal, but now we are short a front-end developer. You know, the person who builds out and pretties the user interface so people can actually use the app.
Okay, we have a plan. We’re going to listen closely during the open-mic to hopefully snatch someone up. A handful of folks went up, but none were the right fit. We were just about to give up, when at the very last second, our future teammate goes up on stage and says he knows Javascript and HTML. All of our hands instantly shot up!
Getting down to business
In the breakout area that we could call home for the next 24 hours, my team quickly got down to business. We started further ideating, as I facilitated the discussion on the value proposition, preliminary features, and also began assigning tasks.
Collaboration and openness was absolutely key here. We had just met each other and we all had very different personalities and skill sets. Building rapport and trust was critical.
Several hours passed and we had yet to build anything. We were still running through features and process. This seemed to be the perfect time to bring in someone from the outside. Someone who would provide a fresh perspective. I suggested we reach out to one of the hackathon mentors. The team was in consensus — great! I run upstairs and find a mentor, Reid, who gladly agreed to help us.
With Reid’s assistance, we storyboard the end-to-end process, further solidify our value prop, and start forming our elevator pitch.
I’m tired
Fast forward 13 hours, it’s 3:00am, and we’re finally almost done building the dapp. We briefly rehearse for the next day’s presentation and decide to get a few hours of sleep before submitting the final code at 8am.
Day 2 — presentations
I jumped out of bed at 7am. I knew this was going to be a thrilling day and I was excited to show the code-a-thon judges, participants, coordinators, and volunteers what we worked so tirelessly to build.
The organizers told us that in the interest of time, only one person should lead the presentation. We chose Daniel, which only seemed fair, given that he came up with the idea and also played a critical role in building it.
Defending democracy
Ladies and gentlemen, I have an announcement to make. The 2016 election was rigged. Or maybe it wasn’t. We don’t know, and that’s the problem.
This was Daniel’s opening line to the judges and the audience. Very well said! Daniel continued giving a 3 minute presentation, while I drove the demo. It worked! We then proceeded to answer 2 minutes of questions from the judges.
After all of the teams presented, each team had to then answer 5 additional minutes of judges Q&A. The questions seemed to be less technical this time around, focusing instead on market-fit and go-to market strategy.
After Q&A finished, the judges left the room to deliberate their decision.
We placed!
About 30 minutes later, the judges return from deliberation and announced the three teams that had placed: Heisenberg Project, Seek Refuge, and Openvote. Openvote — that’s us! Phew, what a thrill! We all give each other a high-five and, almost instantly, our exhaustion is replaced with elation.
Now for the real test
At this point we still didn’t know the order of the winners. To find out, we would need to present again to the entire DC Blockchain Summit conference!
The top 3 teams were escorted into a “waiting area” where we waited for approximately an hour. We joked about how this was the final test of our strength, and we were about to enter the Hunger Games arena.
It wasn’t quite the Hunger Games, but incredibly stressful nonetheless. Kudos to Daniel who presented on behalf of Openvote and to the other two team captains for their fantastic presentations!
Seek Refuge went on to place 1st, Heisenberg Project 2nd, and Openvote 3rd.
It’s over….let’s sleep and debrief!
Hackathon best practices
I took time after the hackathon to debrief and really think about best practices. If someone were to ask me for the hackathon secret sauce, I’d tell them the following:
Form a team beforehand — preferably with folks you know, but strangers are fine too — as long as you sync-up beforehand. If you have competed with the same team in more than two hackathons, get out of your comfort zone and find new teammates.
Form a balanced team — ideally, this would be approximately two developers (front-end and back-end), one Product Manager, and optionally, one technically savvy business person.
Decide on an idea beforehand — I really can’t stress this enough. 24 hours flies by and you don’t want to spend 4 of those hours racking your brain for an idea and trying to get consensus.
Teach yourself coding —You don’t need to quit your day job, but having a moderate understanding of coding will enable you to contribute more to the team. Coding takes time, oftentimes more than anticipated, and having an extra developer to help out and debug goes a long way.
Know your strengths — Have a game plan for what and how you will contribute. Prepare.
Prioritize features & build an MVP — Sure, your product could showcase 3 more features, but question whether those features are worth the time to build. If they’re nice-to-haves, let them go.
Communicate with your team — if you feel like you won’t meet a deadline or may not have the skills to do a task, tell your team. It’s not always easy, but your team will appreciate it.
Commit to frequent status check-ins — Do not assume that just because someone is “busy working,” they are aligned with the team. Save your team re-work and stress by having status checks regularly.
Take care of your body — do your body some good and take regular breaks, stretch, take a walk outside, etc. Don’t forget to try to eat well. Otherwise, you’ll feel like you got hit by a bus for the next 2 days.
Final thoughts
Hackathons are an amazing learning experience. They are a test of grit, resilience, and strength. They feed off of teamwork and collaboration. Hackathons represent all the good in this world and the power of diverse teams to turn revolutionary ideas into a reality.
Happy Hunger Games! Sorry, I meant Happy Coding!
Shout-out to the Openvote team: Daniel Mcnally, Sal Qadir, Andre McGruder, and our mentor Reid Lewis. Nice job, team!
Learn more about the project and access our github repository
Check out our github repository for a more in-depth look into our solution. If you’d like to get involved and helps us continue building out this project, let me know.
Don’t forget to connect with me on Linkedin and Twitter !
Thanks for reading and bye, for now!
If you liked this post, comments and claps are greatly appreciated.
