HINT ’18— My First National Hackathon Experience
In this article, I have jotted down my experience in Hack In The North 3.0. It was my first ever national hackathon, and we secured the position of 1st runners-up. 😀
Note: This story was saved in my drafts for a long long long time. 😛
This article contains more of my personal experience and only a little technical stuff. You are free to skip the sections if you want. 😝
Preface:
It was around second last week of January ’18. My friend Abhishek came to my room and told me about a hackathon that was happening in IIIT Allahabad known as “Hack in the North” aka HINT.
After some research, we found out that this is proclaimed as India’s largest student-organized Hackathon in India.
They were providing “Travel Reimbursement”, “Free Accommodation” and “Free Food” to all the participants. What more does a student hacker want? LOL!
As a matter of fact, we had never taken part in any national hackathon. So naturally, we got very excited and applied for the event as a team of two without a trace of an idea in mind. We believed that we will ultimately figure out some idea, once we get selected.
Further, we came to know that in HINT 2.0 only one team from our college, that too from 3rd-year, got selected to attend the event. Because of this, we felt that the chances of our selection were very less.
Shortlisting:
As soon as the first shortlisting was done, I got an email about my selection. But, my teammate didn’t receive any email. This ultimately meant that I had to attend the event alone.
But later in the second phase he also received an email for his acceptance. Happy!! 😄
We were kind of more nervous than excited because we hadn’t figure out an idea till then.
Now came the brainstorming phase where we had to think of an idea for a Hack. We came with several ideas and researched whether they were feasible or not. After 3–4 days of insightful thinking, we fixed one idea, that we thought would be feasible.
Since we were a team of two people, we had an option to form a new team with two other people who were also attending the Hackathon.
We also asked our seniors if anyone of the teams from their years got selected or not.
These were the stats till the second shortlisting: 2 people from 2nd year (we), 3 people from 3 different teams from 3rd-year (individual selections) and one whole team from the 4th year were selected. Yes, the competition was tough!!
We got an idea, “Why don’t we form a team with our seniors? It would be a huge learning experience for us!”. So, the final job was convincing our third-year seniors to form a team with us.
We reached out to Paritosh Bhaiya and Sushant Bhaiya.
They were reluctant to form a team until the final list was out. 😶
But after the final list was out, they agreed and we formed our “Team Cocaine” which consisted of Sarthak Gupta, Abhishek Singh Saini, Paritosh Sharma, Sushant Kumar Gupta. Sushant bhaiya came up with this unique team name 😆. _/\_
Surprisingly, all of us were attending our first ever national hackathon! We were really very excited.
The Idea:
Soon, we had our very first meeting. Before the meeting, I and Abhishek both were really nervous because we had heard a lot about their pro-dev skills and this was going to be the first time that we would be interacting with them.
We told them our idea (which we thought earlier) and after some more research, got to know that it is not practically possible for us to implement it.
Face-palm!!! 😐
So, we began discussing and came up with some other ideas. Some were really cool, some strange, some really funny (like design a robot that can guide you to the nearest bathroom 😛) that we had a laugh at them for a long time. It was fun!!
Finally, our seniors came up with an idea that was unique and could be implemented in a hackathon. It was damn cool. #ProSeniors #Respect
So, we were using a technology called ‘Docker’, which I and Abhishek had no idea of at that time.😶 But, when we really got to know about it, we were excited to learn it and use it in our project. It was decided that I and Abhishek will handle the front-end and they both will handle the back-end.
Later, after the hackathon, we both also made one more project out of ‘Docker’.
At that time both of us didn’t know that this particular project and the technology ‘Docker’, will benefit us immensely in our internship interviews. 😉
Before the Hackathon:
We reached the venue around 10, in the morning of 16th March 2018. The “Hack” was supposed to begin at 12 midnight. So, we had some free time!!
We roamed around the college to see the IIITA campus. It has good infrastructure!
We still had some free time left. So, all the teams from our college decided to go to “Triveni Sangam” that day.
We booked 3 OLAs for three teams.
The funny thing was that I was not traveling with my own team, but I was with the team which consisted of my 4th-year seniors (Rajat Jain, Subham Sanghai and Aman Aryan) who already knew me quite well. (Through IET)
“Sangam” is a huge place, so when we finally reached there, we weren’t able to find my team-mates and other friends. LOL!
So, I hung out with my 4th-year seniors. We took a boat there and went for a ride in the holy water of Ganges.
The scenery, the feeling, the moment, mixed with some great conversations with them made that day of mine. They are an awesome bunch of people to hang out with.
Lastly, I took a dive into the river as instructed by my mom!! I couldn’t have missed that. Haha! :P
After that, we went to some “Dhaba” to eat something and got back to the venue at around 9 pm for registrations.
The awesome thing in all this was that these seniors didn’t let me pay a single penny from my pocket for all the stuff we did there. From OLA to the Boat-ride to the Food at the Dhaba, they didn’t let me pay for anything.
Such a sweet gesture!! 😃
And, these were one of the nicest group of people I met in my college life.
The Hackathon:
We were exhausted even before the hackathon got started because of that mini-adventurous trip before 😛. We were called at the Auditorium of IIIT Allahabad for the opening ceremony. Several people spoke there about what’s about to happen, some important stuff and blah blah blah….which I didn’t hear, because we were still discussing some important stuff about the project. 😛
The hackathon was of 36 hrs, but I didn’t understand how the time passed by so rapidly.
We were guided to our hack venue. The hack venue was also nice with all the arrangements made to EAT, SLEEP, CODE, REPEAT. It was also cold there!!
We started by discussing our idea with the mentors there. We told them about the problem and our proposed solution. All were quite impressed. 😉
The time went by, and mid evaluation came across. We had a working product ready at that time. The mentors and judges called us and we were successfully able to give a live demo of it. They gave us a major task to be implemented for the final evaluation.
During the hackathon, we also attended a few tech talks given by the mentors who were present there. In spite of me being sleep deprived, some of them felt quite interesting to me. I especially enjoyed the talk on UNITY 3D engine, where we were shown a practical demo of a VR game.
So, time passed by normally without a hint. Some bugs were encountered but the final task was successfully done. We completed our project 1–2 hrs before the final evaluation started. After some time, the “hack” period ended officially……………………………………………………………….
We were finally called for the final evaluation.
And, we did well in explaining our hack to them! One of the mentors said “You did that task? Wow!”. He was quite impressed by us. :D But, we didn’t make much out of it because we thought that maybe it’s just a way he motivates the teams.
After the hack ended, all the teams were asked to make presentations for their project, which were to be shown, if selected in the top 20. Later all the teams were called back to the auditorium from where it all started.
We already had seen some of the projects in the hackathon and believe me, they were amazing! So, we thought we had less chance of coming in the top 20.
While sitting in the auditorium, ‘imposter syndrome’ began to strike! The mind went in an infinite loop, thinking this “Hoga yan nahi hoga! Apna project acha hai ya nahi?”.
So, names were slowly called out. And, we were called out somewhere in the end! “Hufffff! Some relief!”.
We successfully gave our presentation.
In between the presentations, the result of a Facebook lucky draw was announced. And guess who won it? It was Sushant bhaiya. He got an Amazon Alexa!! So, we were taking at least something home this time.
The presentations were over. After some heavy discussion b/w the mentors, it was time for results.
Also, in between this, someone from the HINT team inquired about our project and team name. Hopes were raised!!!
The names were slowly called out from the 7th Rank in upwards fashion.
Ranks up to 4 were already called out. In each of these moments, we were like “Inme chance tha, yeh bhi gaya!”.
The 3rd rankers were announced. It was not us. Now we were like “Let’s go somewhere out of this place!”.
Now, the next team was announced. “The second prize goes to………..Team Cocaine from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra”. Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?
We actually yelled like insane there, in light of the fact that we couldn’t accept what had simply happened at that exact second.
We had done it!! 😃
This is what we got:
1. ₹20,000 prize money
2. A JBL Speaker
3. A freecodecamp t-shirt (I wanted that desperately)
4. Other swag ;)
After we got the prize, we went to the mentors who appreciated us during the evaluations. We thanked them for believing in us and supporting us.
And you know what one of them said after that? “Sorry guys, I was not able to bring you in 1st position!”. He was the same person who appreciated us during the final evaluation. That statement by him was worth all the effort that we put in our Hack.
Speechless!!!!
Now, we believed that we indeed did a great job. 😃
“Winning a national hackathon” was added to the bucket list and checked off! :D (This is what I do. LOL!!)
Later, we celebrated the victory with a light dinner sponsored by the seniors. :)
Review:
PROS:
- HINT — 3.0 was a great experience for me.
- The accommodation given was good. The “Travel reimbursement” was one of the best things. The food….(deserves a new point).
- The food they provided was excellent. It was delicious. It was like I was eating in a 5-star hotel.
- The workshops and the tech talks by various people on Blockchain, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies and Unity 3D were good. I learned a few things from them. The talk on Unity 3D was quite enjoyable.
CONS:
- We had to use a proxy for accessing the internet. As our project was networking based, so the proxy did cause some problem for us. It was the only thing we faced difficulty with. We had to use our own internet at some points.
- The snacks provided in b/w could be increased. 😛 (Personal preference, not a con).
Highlights:
- Forming a team or doing a project with people who are many times better than you is a great decision. You’ll learn a lot more in this way. For us, those people were our seniors. Thanks for forming a team with us. We really got to learn a lot from you guys. 😃
- Whenever you see an opportunity, try to grab it! In spite of having less expertise (at least according to me 😛), we applied in the event and won it. Living by this motto since the first year.
- I also met , who is one of the best developers I know. More than that he is an awesome person to talk to if you are curious about technology. He also gave me a vision about what I should probably pursue in next 5–10 years.
Do follow him for some great stuff. 😃 - We also received a request for incubation of our project (they were offering office, sponsorship, mentorship, and stuff ). But, we rejected it because of various reasons.
- This particular hackathon motivated me to participate in more hackathons like these. Because you can learn so many things from these events. I will for sure increase my number of participation in these events.
- After winning, we got our name featured on our college’s website. And most importantly, we got free attendance for the days we were not in college. LOL! Trust me, that’s a huge thing in our college.
Thanks to the HINT team for having us!
The way you organized things is commendable. Kudos to you for giving us a wonderful experience. You guys have literally changed the student hackathon culture in India. _/\_
Peace!
