A hackathon is a competition where coders and programmers get together and do some development in order to solve a burning problem in the society. It is more like a programming competition where there is competition, innovation and knowledge sharing happening through out the time period. The word hackathon is made up from the two words, "HACK" + "MARATHON". Hacking in this context is not referred to as the computer crime that we see today in the market, but the hacking of technology that is available today to provide the optimal solution for the problem being addressed. The word marathon implies a race of coding where programmers have to do the coding like a marathon so that they can achieve their expected results within a given period of time.
Wanna know more about what hackathons are, what kind of hackathons are available today in the industry and why hackathons are important, read this blog.
How to Compete in Hackathons?
There are many different approaches that anyone can use in order to take part in hackathons. This approach that I will be addressing here is a much more general approach with examples where this can be applied to any kind of hackthon mentioned in this article. This is also applicable for competitions which are not hackathons as this shows a much more generalized problem solving approach in order to get into a competitive background.
The following steps are the summary of what will be discussed in this blog article and each of these steps will be discussed as the blog article flows down.
Form a Team
Find a Hackathon
Submit a Proposal
Go to the Hackathon
Build the Product
Pitch the Idea
Win the competition
Now let's have a look at each of these points in detail.
1) Form a Team
Team formation is one of the most important aspects when it comes to hackathons or any kind of group activities. Hackathons are a very competitive and time based competition where free riders will not be tolerated by any means. Every member of the team is expected to have a vital and mandatory responsibility in the team and each of their tasks support the final objective of the product being developed. Without one person, the product would not be successful.
The ideal member count for an average hackathon team would be 3 or 4 members because most competitions require around 3 to 5 members competing in each team. Following are the identified skills required in a team member to compete in a hackathon. One person may have multiple skills whereas some may only have one of the following. But what matters at the end is that the team composition contains these characteristics to go forth in the competition.
Competitive Leadership Skills
A good leader is a good team player. This is true in any kind of group formation whereas leaders are expected to do the overall coordination of the team and drive the team forward during ups and downs. There might be instances where you will have to let go of the entire architecture of the product and adapt into a different one. Sometimes the stress and workload will drive you crazy during hackthons when you feel like there is no hope of winning. This is where a leader plays a vital role in the team. He or she is not idolized as a leader, but is respected in the decision making process. A leader's role is not only coordination. A leader should consist many of the other skills mentioned below so as to become a better team player both in coordination and development of the final solution.
Good Technical Skills
Most of these competitions are either technology based or algorithm based whereas having good technical skills is a must, in order to give a challenging product at the end of the competition. Having good technical skills is a must, no matter what the competition type is. At least two members of the team should have a sound knowledge on the relevant technologies being used and that knowledge can be further used in the development process and pitching of the idea.
Presentations Skills
The overall judgement of the competition is finally decided by the end presentation, done by the main presenter of the team. No matter how good and relevant the product is, if the presenter can't express the idea of the product to the judging panel and the audience, the effort put in to build the product will go to waste. The final objective of the presentation is to let the audience feel what you felt and let them see what you have already seen.
The composition of the presentation is really important and more focus should be given to the structure of the presentation in order to catch the eye of the audience. The important contents which should be included in a hackathon presentation will be explained in detail, at the end of this section.
Negotiation Skills
During the course of the hackathon and at the end of the hackathon when the final pitches are being done, negotiations skills is what will convince the audience that the product will make an impact to the society. During the course of the hackathon, there may be various interested parties like developers, angel investors and mentors going around asking questions about the products, where you will have to negotiate with them and show the true potential of your application.
During the time of the final presentation, the time allocated for each team would be around 5 mins and a separate time would be allocated for 'questions and answering". During this time the judges might ask questions which are relevant and irrelevant in some cases, whereas your counter reply to each question will decide whether you will win the hackathon or not. If by any chance you fail to give a valid reasoning to each of those questions, it will be hard for the judges to change their mindset towards the positive side of the product, which will lead to their negative perspective being given to the final result of your product. Therefore negotiation skills is an important factor where you might want to hire people who can negotiate with people very well.
Finance Knowledge
In any hackathon, the financial aspects play a key role, since everyone is mainly concerned on how this product can reach the market with a good potential. This also includes the marketing aspects of the product in certain cases. With respect to finances, it is better to have a person in the team who has a sound knowledge about how finances work in products and startups so that you will be able to consider these aspects when presenting the final product.
After all, there is no point in developing a product that cannot be easily taken into market and which cannot be sold to people in a reasonable manner. Having a finance person is mandatory in competitions like "Business Concept Competitions" where as the primary focus in these competitions is to convince the investors and the judges that the product can be sold easily and that it has a potential for the interested parties to invest in.
Great Designers
You might wonder, why designers are needed in a hackathon team. They are mostly needed during the presentation of the product (final pitches). This person need not be a hardcore designer, but better to have someone with good photo editing and video editing knowledge, since these are the factors that actually catch the eye of the audience. If you can use some colourful images and some quality videos at the beginning of the presentation, that would indeed attract the attention of everyone in the audience including the judging panel.
Domain Experts
This depends on competitions where the domain or the industry that we addressing plays a crucial part. If we are addressing a legal domain or a medical domain, we need people who actually know about these industries. Because in competitions where the domain is important, most of the people in the audience and the judging panel will be domain experts, where they will ask questions related to the domain and technologies related to that domain. Therefore having a person who has some kind of a knowledge about the domain is important.
This person does not need to be a permanent member in the team to be taken into every hackathon, but this person might be useful during certain kinds of hackathons. If you feel that a person like this should not be included in the team, come into an agreement with that person to get support during the time of the hackathon and before that. Contact a friend or a colleague to get such help regarding the knowledge of the domain of interest,
2) Find a Hackathon
Finding suitable hackathons is not an easy task. There are hundreds of hackathons happening everyday around the world and finding a proper hackathon that will suit your interest is not that easy. There are some ways that you can follow in order to seek a hackathon and start hacking.
Always remember that most of the hackathons that you will find today, are recurring ones where it will happen every year during the same period of time. Therefore you need to keep an eye on for those respective days because the relevant websites will soon update the latest news and the dates of those hackathon when the time is right.
Google search - The easiest way to find a hackathon is to search on google. You might find hackathons which are already held a long time back and some already finished. Make note of the time of the year of which each hackathon was held in, because most probably you will come across them happening again this year, during the same period in the year. Also make sure that you search for these with the name of the country you are in. You can also include the domain of interest in the search query, so that you will get the most suitable results that you are looking for.
Ask seniors and lecturers - Getting to know these details from friends, colleagues and lecturers is the fastest way to know about hackathons happening around you. Most of the time, your friends and seniors might have taken part in these hackthons in the previous years and they would indeed help you to go into the hackathons happening this year. And lecturers get information related to hackathons through other universities and other lecturers. Therefore consulting them would also be a better approach in finding suitable hackathons
Follow blogs and websites - There are plenty of blogs and websites that contain up to date information related to hackathons happening in that country or area. Therefore it's very useful to follow these websites and blogs to know about new hackathons coming up and the details of the previous hackathons and what kind of a situation was there in those hackathons. One of the famous websites which contains hackathons related to Sri Lankan's is Hacknews. It contains most up to date information about hackahtons happening in Sri Lanka. Another page that everyone is Sri Lanka should follow is the Facebook Ideamart page. Ideamart is one of the main hackathon hosts in Sri Lanka and they keep an up to date thread on hackathons and technologies in the country and abroad.
3) Submit a Proposal
Submitting a proposal is a very important phase when taking part in hackathons. There will be many competitors out there trying to apply for these hackathons and if your proposal does not seem to show a potential to the judges who will be selecting each proposal, your idea will not be selected for the hackathon.
This phase is mandatory in most of the hackathons and you are supposed to explain your idea in a few words like 100 or 300, where you have to twist the words in a very smart and concise way by making sure that you give out the essence of the product in the proposal. If the selecting panel likes your idea, they will pick it and inform you that you are eligible to take part in this hackathon.
Most of the time, ensure to address the problem of interest in the proposal to make sure that you are giving a very clear idea of the product. Use some catchy phrases and also keep in mind that the probability of your product being chosen depends on the originality of your idea. If your idea is not original and it is already available in the industry, then the selecting panel will never choose your product to compete in the hackathon.
Some competitions allow you to apply many proposals as you want, so that the best one will be selected out of them. But it is always better to submit may be one or two ideas the most, but make sure that the idea is very strong and it is on point.
4) Go to the hackathon
When your product proposal is being selected by the organiznig team, you will be informed about the dates and other relevant information about the hackathon. Make sure to take part in the hackathon on the mentioned dates and they might even conduct workshops before that where attending those workshops will give you an added advantage on how to compete in the competition.
Some of these hackathons are overnight hackathons where you need to go prepared with some additional clothes, tooth brush etc. Food and beverages are mostly provided by most of the organizers and they even conduct entertainment sessions to keep the motivation of the hackers high and alive, during the time of the hackathon.
During the time of the hackathon, you might come across people who are interested in your products and they might even come and talk to you. Make sure to give a good impression to each of them and carry out your tasks as planned.
5) Building the Product
Within the time of the hackathon, you are supposed to build and complete the product as a final product to be demonstrated to the judging panel. Trust me when I say this, even though you think that you will be able to finish the product as planned and give out a great impact at the end, it will be really hard. When the time goes by, you might get stuck at certain phases and there may be bottlenecks halting the progress of your development and you have to ensure that you will continue your work in an orderly fashion no matter what the situation is.
In certain competitions, having a completed end product is not mandatory but its always better to have a product that can be demonstrated at the end of the competition. Because most of the judges expect to see an end product since they make most of the judgments after seeing the real product that has been built.
As mentioned above, you might get to know many people who will come and talk to you about your product during the time of the hackathon. Therefore it is important to build a good network with everyone and make connections as much as possible. You might have a possibility in running into the same people during other hackathons or some day in your career.
6) Pitch the Idea
The final presentation is what will decide whether your product will win the competition or not. It is really important to give a wonderful presentation at the end that will give a great Wow factor to all of the judges and the audience. Sometimes, just by the presentation itself, the judges will be amazed and happy about the product being delivered and that would be an added advantage for the winners selection process.
What to include in the pitch and how to do the pitch will be explained a little later in this blog. For now, remember that having a great final pitch will merely define the final results of the competition. If you are interested in seeing some great pitches and getting some motivation factors for yourself, look for pitching videos online and you will find plenty of them. And finally make sure that this is not merely a presentation. It is a product pitching and it should not be done in way that you would do a speech to and audience. The audience at a hackathon will be tech guys and other business investors. Therefore make sure to give a perfect pitch and gain the attention of everyone at the beginning of the presentation. (Hint: use some videos or audio clips to retain the attention of the audience at all times)
This is why I mentioned that you will be needing a team member with good presentation skills at the beginning of this blog.
7) Win the competition
Always remember that it is not always about winning the competition. Most of all, taking part in a hackathon is the most important part. You can always gain a lot of experience and knowledge by just taking part in hackathons. I know the feeling of spending hours and days working on a product and not winning at the end of the competition. It feels really demotivating and sad, but you should ensure to keep going with other competitions may be with the same product or a different product. Always make sure to get the ups and downs from each competition and give a strong come back in the next hackathon. You should never expect yourself to win the very first hackathon. It take s a huge amount of time and experience for a person to get there and that is how you should go forth step by step.
As a tipping point, always aim at winning the competition and compete on that. Never feel down and back down from a competition, and if you back down once, you will get used to it and keep backing down forever. It is not going to be easy, but through sweat and tears, win a hackathon and and the feeling that you get when you win a hackathon out of many competitors from around the country and sometimes from around the world, is immense and wonderful.
What to include in the final pitch?
There are some important factors that you need to include in the final presentation in order to win a hackathon and give a wow factor to the entire audience. Make sure to include the following components in the final pitch and the have a look at each of the subsections to get an idea on what to include and how to address each point.
Problem being identified
A burning problem in the society or domain of interest
Have a very good way to validate the problem.
How big is the problem (Look at the target market)
Prepare the perfect solution
Technologies that will be used to finish the product.
A solution that no one has ever seen before. (This is the originality of the product)
A solution that will affect a mass market
A product that will Wow the audience
Identify Competitors
Who are the competitors of this product?
How is your product different from others?
How will the competitors react to your product?
Would it be easy to reach the current market with these competitors at hand?
Figure out the finances
Cost of the product
Selling price of the product
Marketing plan
Key partners
Potential investors