Organizing HackOn 2.0
How we organized and managed the largest student-led hackathon in India
4 months, 10 organizers, 22 speakers, 25 mentors, 35 judges, and 324 volunteers culminated when approx. 8300 technology enthusiasts registered to join us from May 28th to 30th at (arguably) the largest student-led hackathon in India, the HackOn 2.0 Hackathon.
What is HackOn 2.0?
HackOn 2.0 was a global digital hackathon created by hackers for hackers to enable social good around us. Since its very inception, HackOn has always prioritized creating inclusive and nurturing spaces for budding technologists to grow while providing them with opportunities to express their ideas and skills. This year at HackOn, we chose to focus on the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on all of us over the last year, bringing more attention to problems centred around diversity, inclusion, and mental health. Thus, the 3 tracks we chose to prioritize at this time were:
- Diversity and Inclusion
- Mental Health Awareness
- COVID-19 Impact
Beyond that, we also kept up our Open Innovation track to create the space for hackers to experiment with their knowledge and interests, wherever those may have laid.
Pre-Hackathon Activities
Even as we began working on this initiative, being all hackers, we recognized the problems that folks new to the hackathon space face as beginners. As a result, we created a plethora of learning and growth opportunities for our participants in the weeks leading up to HackOn via sessions with various domain experts and community leaders, which were conducted via various formats such as YouTube live streams and Twitter Spaces. These sessions were quite well received and saw over 8000 views combined as well. Not only that, but to provide consistent mentorship to our hackers, we also conducted weekly virtual meetups in our Discord server called DevConnects for 8 consecutive weeks before the hackathon. These meetups ranged in content from hackathons and project development to open source and tech communities to academia and research and saw some of the most diversified groups of hackers come together to learn and share. This made DevConnects one of the biggest highlights of the HackOn 2.0 journey.
Highlights of the Hackathon
With all the pre-hackathon activities having been such a blast, HackOn 2.0 started with a bang. Having achieved 8298 registrants for the plethora of activities we had for the hackathon, we saw 2294 hackers check-in with us on the very first day of the hackathon. The hackathon weekend, in its entirety, saw various technical discussions, fun mini-events, mental health-centric activities, and of course, with a humongous total of 30 prizes up for the taking, one of the most fantastic hacking contests ever!
All these amazing feats would not have been possible without the 25 sponsors and 29 community partners who chose to support our initiative and join us in our community to interact with, mentor, and uplift our hackers! We’re especially grateful to our title sponsor Amagi, a global leader in SaaS technology providing end-to-end cloud-managed live and on-demand video infrastructure for TV and OTT platforms, along with some of our major sponsors Elastic, Auth0, Magic, WazirX, GitHub, GraphCMS, QuikNode, HackerEarth, and Major League Hacking, for without their immense support we could not have created such an amazing experience for our hackers.
Winners Showcase
HackOn 2.0 saw some amazing submissions, but some of them stood out among the crowd and went on to win prizes at the hackathon. Here they are:
Winner
The Overall Winner of HackOn 2.0 was ApCoBed: Apkeliye Covid Bed, a one-stop solution for every problem the general public faces related to the COVID-19 pandemic, also designated as the “Uber for COVID beds” by our judges.
Blog Link: https://medium.com/hackonhackathon/winning-story-of-hackon2-0-e7cef670ddad
First Runner-Up
The First Runner-Up of HackOn 2.0 was Manobal (मनोबल), a happiness buddy assisting people with their mental health, which featured an AR bot that users could communicate with, in real-time.
2nd Runner-Up
The Second Runner-Up of HackOn was Debately, an AI-enabled solution that creates safer spaces for healthy debates while providing analysis on the content discussed as well.
Blog Link: https://medium.com/hackonhackathon/project-debately-at-hackon-2-0-third-prize-winners-ed9e18c7a34c
Best of HackOn
The Best of HackOn were the next 7 submissions among our top 10 which we felt were stand-out ideas and solutions at the hackathon. Here they are:
Blog Link: https://medium.com/hackonhackathon/sukoon-4fa7c5ca64ab
Blog Link: https://medium.com/@bhartiyachitra/a9ffd4f0c566#
Blog Link: https://sukesh04.medium.com/first-hack-a-thon-win-9e87e4976a51
Blog Link: https://medium.com/hackonhackathon/v-map-visualizing-covid-19-in-india-2e61a08fa52c
Best Voice Hack
Winner: VoiceFoodStore
Blog Link: https://nyctonio.medium.com/hackon-2-0-best-voice-hack-143b2b6c6fc0
Best Beginners Hack
Winner: BAYMAX — Personal Mental Healthcare Companion
Blog Link: https://medium.com/hackonhackathon/project-baymax-at-hackon-2-0-hackathon-dcd416cd9989
Best Hardware Hack Sponsored by Digi-Key
Winner: Emojo Chatbot
Blog Link: https://medium.com/hackonhackathon/emojo-mental-health-chatbot-adafb7a240a4
Best Use of Linode
Winner: Med-Bay
Blog Link: https://medium.com/hackonhackathon/experience-at-hackon-2-0-by-team-innovatica-52e198046f17
Best Domain Name from GoDaddy Registry
Winner: MindSpace (mindspace.study)
Best Hack Built on Elastic
Winner: Project Zone
Blog Link: https://medium.com/hackonhackathon/project-zone-a-zone-for-programmers-ac01c74141ea
Best Use of Auth0
Winner: Baatcheet
Blog Link: https://medium.com/hackonhackathon/hackon-2-0-hackerearth-fd727424173f
Best GraphQL Project
Winner: AIRS WomxnEdu
Blog Link: https://medium.com/hackonhackathon/airs-womxnedu-best-graphql-project-31ce0e2d66b3
Best Use of GraphCMS
Winner: ShopZop
Blog Link: https://medium.com/hackonhackathon/shopzop-empower-businesses-with-one-click-94c54d4d4f7
Build With Magic
- Winner: WeCare
Blog Link: https://parigames.medium.com/we-care-at-hackon2-0-6cdbe151e0b0
- First Runner-Up: ShopZop
Blog Link: https://medium.com/hackonhackathon/shopzop-empower-businesses-with-one-click-94c54d4d4f7
- Second Runner-Up: Debately
Blog Link: https://medium.com/hackonhackathon/project-debately-at-hackon-2-0-third-prize-winners-ed9e18c7a34c
Best use of SAWO
Winner: Sukoon- Realize, Calm, Heal
Blog Link: https://medium.com/hackonhackathon/sukoon-4fa7c5ca64ab
Best Women and LGBTQIA+ Team
Winner: Pravesh Aadhar
Blog Link: https://srishtitiwari742.medium.com/experience-at-hack-on-2-0-9c695a200005
Best use of Symbl.ai
- Winner: Debately
Blog Link: https://medium.com/hackonhackathon/project-debately-at-hackon-2-0-third-prize-winners-ed9e18c7a34c
- Special Mention: Therasights — Therapy with AI insights
GitHub MyOctocat Challenge
Winning Tweet: https://twitter.com/Shreeminif/status/1398940041183862784?s=20
Prizes and Swags
All of these amazing winners received some amazing prizes from the HackOn team as well as our lovely partners. Aside from that. the winners along with our mentors, judges, and top volunteers have also received a HackOn Swag Pack which includes a custom HackOn t-shirt, sticker, badge and thank you note.
The Team Behind The Scenes
Any great plan is only as good as the team behind it, and in our case, we had one of the most hard-working and dedicated teams ever. A huge shout out to Mushthaq Ahamad, Apoorv Dwivedi, Paras Gupta, Saish Adlak, Ojasvi Khurana, Siddharth Dayalwal, Khushi Sharma, Shubhangi Gupta, and Rishabh Bansal for being the best possible teammates I could have asked for in this amazing journey.
I’m especially very grateful to Rishabh and Shubhangi for being a part of this journey. The 3 of us have been with HackOn since its 1st edition in April 2020 and HackOn would not have reached the heights that it did without them. It was a privilege working with all these folks and I can not wait to collaborate with them again in the future!
Conclusion
HackOn 2.0 was one of the most impactful initiatives our team had the opportunity to work on. It was a highly educational and fulfilling experience for us, and we can not wait to return with HackOn 3.0 next year!