Over the last few years, many people have asked me things about Hackathons. I take this opportunity, to sum up, my thoughts. Please feel free to share and add your comments as well!
What, Why and How of Hackathons?
Caffeine-saturated geeks prototyping crazy and sometimes, world-changing ideas!
Adding more detail…
1) Ideas rule in Hackathons!
Hackathons are limited time (12hr – 48hr) contests, sometimes with set themes and sometimes with none. You are expected to pitch a brilliant idea, form a team and build a quick prototype over generous servings of caffeine and carbs. Hence, it is reasonable to not deliver a shiny packaged product, but only the skeletal working prototype. Ideas need not be billion $$$ product-to-ship! They just have to get people curious enough and make the time spent worthwhile!
2) Function over design!
Hackathon is not product demo. Do not fret over getting that curve on your product right or that software app working flawlessly! Get the things rolling first, even if it means to have octagon wheels instead of circular wheels or hardcoded values in software! Show it can be done, get it to function right!
3) You know what you know!
Often the mind tends to get dreamy and leads us to land of ‘absolutely-no-idea-how-to-build-that’ when we think about projects to work on. Hackathons ground you with time deadlines, making sure you know what you really know and making sure you can use those skills / experiences to hack a quick prototype. Hackathons helped me identify things I had overlooked but were important. It gave me a ready to-do list of technical knowledge and skills to gain next! You are your own boss or project manager in a hackathon
4) Evangelize!
Most hackathons are won by people of brilliant idea + spirit. A million $$$$ idea with nothing to demo will take you nowhere! Show that passion on what your creating and get a working prototype. I go to hackathons to evangelize my ideas, admire other brilliant ideas and people!
5) Meet and network
Most important thing to do is to meet and network! Do not skip this activity thinking that you’ll build something incredible. Just floating around once in a while will give you physical exercise, increase mental stamina, calm your thoughts, brings in new ideas and most importantly, get you to meet your future co-founder or boss or client or best friend or soulmate 😀
Over more than a handful of hackathons, I’ve met the craziest people who believe in themselves and in me. I’ve made many friends over hackathons, where we met as strangers pitching ideas!
6) Opportunities
Hackathons are one of the most unique ways to proving your worth to potential employers. The very fact that you can hover over the computer screen and solder circuits all-weekend is a turn-on factor for people wanting to hire passionate folks. People racing to hackathon-after-hackathon, wins-after-wins tend to be confident people who are not only sure of what they know but also sure of where they want to go next! If you are a company seeking to hire brilliant minds, host a hackathon next weekend! You’ll meet the coolest folks and their coolest ideas!
7) Outcomes
A successful demo will get you famous, or get you an interview or get you an investor! An unsuccessful demo will get a ‘determined you’, or get you a bigger to-do list or get you just free food and drink! There is only good that can come forth
8) Swag and prizes
Over the numerous hackathons that I’ve been to, I’ve generously been given hardware and software products for free. Not only did these motivate me to continue hacking and making, they gave me actual objects to work with! I’m grateful to the few dozen cool t-shirts that I get to wear. But, the main incentive is addition to my geeky lanyard treasures! Lanyards are an engineer’s equivalent of an Olympic gold medal
Most important, I go to a hackathon to challenge myself to think different, to flush my blood stream with some adrenaline (plus caffeine), to meet cool ideas+people and to keep my passion for engineering buzzed!
If I were to sum it all up into a sentence:
“Turn Dreams into Demos!”
Go Hack!
