What is it like to attend a hackathon?

Attending a hackathon is quite similar to going to play FIFA at new friend’s place.

Almost everybody is there with an Objective:

• Sponsors: Maximum exposure and publicity for their company
• Companies: Maximum talent acquisition, recruitment and marketing of products.
• Volunteers: Food, Experience and Certificates. Some are genuinely there to help out.
• Mentors: Mentors are mainly there to help around. Mentors usually have experience within that respective industry and are budding Angel investors.
• Hackers/Participants: Some are here for certificates, experience and most importantly to build something game changing. Some are there with the sole objective of winning and they either make it or break it.

Hackathons are normally judged by investors or experienced professionals from that industry.

I’ve been a participant and a mentor at numerous hackathons with topics ranging from social causes, Tedx, Fashion Tech and Fintech ones.

Normally it is a 24 hour hackathon where people bring about a solution, product or a social initiative with projected growth, statistics and much more.

Most of the hackathons have an open topic and are free.

This is where I’ve noticed and started believing that people do indeed convert coffee to code.
It didn’t take me too long to observe that some converted Beer, Vodka, soda and Wine to code as well.

Enchanté !

Hackathons can be compared to a coloring competition between adults to see who comes out with the most creative sustainable solution to the posed problem.

Hackathons bring together designers, programmers,coders, developers, recruiters, CEOs, CTOs and many more, all hungry to consume and showcase.

Everybody at Hackathons almost always never have a complete product ready.
People build what’s called an MVP, a minimum viable product to show that the product can indeed be built and justified.

Hackathons are more about architecting the solution for programmers, coding for coders, building solutions for developers, designing for designers, presenting for marketers and headhunting for everyone else.

There is almost always free food and drinks if hosted at a coworking space.

Here’s what to expect from a Hackathon:

• A ton of new friends, connections and networking.
• A ton of pizza, drinks and food.
• A ton of learning.
• A ton of productivity and time management
• A ton of recruitment and promotion
• A ton of free stuff
• A ton of opportunities to grow
• A ton of excitement
• A ton of Fun

All in all, go with an open mind and more importantly, Have Fun!

PS: Always take a sweatshirt or a hoodie to a hackathon for it is usually pretty cold due to the AC if indoors

I hope this was helpful.

I’ve begun to write on medium to document what I take away from my daily experiences at Belavadi Prahalad — Medium. You’re better off learning from my mistakes rather than making the same ones yourself. What say ?