ThinkAHack Hackathon
My experience in the first ever RPA themed hackathon at KGiSL campus.
This is my first blog at Medium and I am very excited to share my experience about my first ever Hackathon. My name is Himanshu Jain P and I am currently pursuing my final year B.Tech Information Technology from KGiSL Institute of Technology. Recently, UiPath Sponsored Hackathon was conducted in my campus organized by KGiSL-GSS and I participated in it with a team of 3. It was my first Hackathon and I guess the most amazing one I would ever see in my lifetime. From the past few years, my college is conducting multiple Hackathons in our campus but I couldn’t be a part of it. Every-time I asked my parents for it and their reply would be no. They used to think that Hackathon is a place where we continuously work without giving rest to our body. Since this was my final year of college, they approved for it.
I was very much enthusiastic and waiting for the dates to arrive. My team-mate Shivaram already had a problem statement in his mind. So we planned accordingly and split up the tasks among ourselves. One of our Junior Hari Kowshick from IT department showed his interest in RPA and joined our team.
Finally, the date arrived and I was very much electrified. Dr. Ashok Bakthavathsalam, Managing Director, KGiSL; Mr. Raghunath Subramanian, CEO, UiPath India; Mr. Prassadh Shanmugam, CEO, KGISL-GSS, and Mr. Tejus Venkatesh, RPA Evangelist, UiPath, inaugurated the Hackathon. Their inspiring words and motivational spirit were amazing. More than 1500 students from all over India participated in this event. Some of the clients from South Korea also gave a visit to the event as guests to encourage the student's spirit and inducement.
As the Hackathon began, we planned and split the modules to each other. As the work proceeded, we simultaneously made a presentation to display our project idea and the necessary modules. There were many mentors both from KGiSL and UiPath to support us and help us clear our technical difficulties. Among the Judge panel, there were Kidnappers (aka HR’s) from KGiSL who were responsible to judge teams and select the technically sound teams and hire them. KGiSL recruited over 120 final year students from Hackathon and is providing internship opportunities to various other non-final year students.
This Hackathon helped me improve my personality traits such as openness to experience and being extroverted. It gave me a lot of courage to interact with so many people around me. Looking at so many tech enthusiasts working around me motivated me to work even harder. I learned to work as a team more efficiently. Time management is the key skill that we learned during this event. Developing a working model of your project in 36 hours is truly a difficult job. Scheduling work and managing time at such events really prove to be helpful.
During the night, we were all feeling very much sleepy yet we did not stop our work. Mentors from both UiPath and KGiSL kept us motivating and supporting to their fullest. They kept small sessions to keep us entertained. These sessions included singing, dancing and playing a quiz. Their support during sleep hours made us fresh and optimistic to work.
Out of 500+ teams, only 2 teams got selected for Coffee with Tejus. This included my team too. We were stunned when we were asked to report for this event. It was really pleasured talking to such an enthusiastic person and meeting his team. We discussed our journey at Hackathon and had a lot of fun talking to each other. At the end of this session, we were handed with Rs.1500 worth Amazon Vouchers per person.
Fortunately, we were able to get into the top 17 teams. At the end of this event, I really felt satisfied and blessed for getting such an opportunity to learn and grow.
I truly agree that Hackathons can be the new revolution for education. An education that offers high-level training in a short duration of time. I request all my readers to participate in as many Hackathons as possible to grow and enrich your knowledge and enhance your capability.
After the Hackathon, I could see many of my Juniors at college working hard to complete their RPA Certification. With continuous motivation from our Head of Department Dr. Vijaya Ravichandran, sessions and workshops were conducted to create awareness about RPA and these sessions helped most of the first years to complete their Level 1 and Level 2 certification. These sessions and workshop are being conducted from the past two weeks. Students from final year B.Tech IT, who participated in the Hackathon (Ms. Dini Kokila and Mr. Shivaram B), guided and motivated the first-year students. Also, 1st Runner up of Hackathon, Mr. Nagendran, Mr. Balraj, and Mr. Mohammed Nisar took the workshop for interested students on Saturday and Sunday to guide them complete their Level 3 certification.
Some of the amazing memories from Hackathon…
