HasGeek — As the (Hack) Night unfolded
With our Mid Sem exams a thing of the past, bored geeks that we were, we wanted to unwind with a hackathon for the weekend. A few google queries and a couple of days later, the 4 of us (Aniket, Janaki, Abhinav and Ashhad) found ourselves in the plush office of RazorPay at 11pm in the night, looking at each others blank faces, trying to come up with an app idea that could be built and presented in 12 hours.
Initially, we kept toying with more sombre hackneyed ideas that are generally prevalent in hackathons — ideas based on Machine Learning, Analytics and even related to the RazorPay portal.
However, there was something about the setting of the hackathon that made us feel that we could break out of the typical hackathon genre and come up with something radically different, something “outlandish”.
The sumptuous spread consisting of cold drinks, chips, bread, peanut butter and burgers were not really helping in our concentration either.
Around half past midnight, we finally boiled our ideas to one — inspired by the fact that in settings like the one we were in, it is a common mishap where participants who are too engrossed in their work often miss out on vital announcements (eg a call for dinner). We decided to tackle this problem by creating an announcement app that would seamlessly receive all the announcements made by the organizer, as long as they were on the same network.
It was a fairly simple idea and we decided to make an uncomplicated implementation. Let me not get into the nitty-gritty of the development work. Like all good movies, I will skip the hours of toil that we went through. However, the night in itself was a memorable one. Abhinav and Janaki, who were responsible for the server and database, maintained a consistent stream of food as well as data that kept revitalizing our systems.
Towards the wee hours in the morning, we found our batteries draining out and so took turns to take a wink in convenient places.
Within moments, dawn had arrived and we found ourselves working frantically to bring our app to a satisfactory version. Even while desperately trying to finish our work, we could not help but feast in the delicious breakfast that was provided.
The fact that time runs faster as the deadline approaches closer was experienced once again (Einstein would have been proud) and before we knew it, we were summoned to the breakout room to showcase our work.
We were the last team to be called for presentation. Before starting, we distributed our mobiles among the audience so that they could experience the app in action. Then we made an announcement through the organizers app and voila — the message appeared on refresh in every other phone. Post that we had a constructive discussion on how to deal with some complexities of the design. We were pleasantly surprised to find our app in the top 4 ideas list and we were told that we would get to present our idea at the prestigious DroidconIN conference on November 10.
Each Hackathon gives you many things — rewards, awards, prizes, goodies etc. But if there’s something that you return with from every hackathon — it is feelings. And while returning from this hackathon we felt really really good. The muscles in our bodies ached but the pain came with the pleasure of accomplishment, fulfillment and the satisfaction of having developed something, however small from end to end. The fact that we had successfully shown an idea the light of the day, translated a thought into something tangible (albeit through a touch pad) gave us immense happiness and inspiration to stick to the idea, keep on hacking and develop something wonderful. So much so, that even while I write this post at 5 am in the morning, I find Aniket messaging me, asking me to start the server so that he can try out some new feature that he has implemented.
One sleepless night ignited the passion in us and made us realize that we have miles to go before we sleep…
