You Should Be Doing More Hackathons

Its not just coding all day and all night. Hackathons are a way for you to solve problems that you never would have thought of encountering before. It's a way of being able to talk and connect and make a lot of friends with people who spend their time wanting to solve problems. Because the people you find at these hackathons, whether they're technically astute or not, you're not going to find people like that on the side of the road who are willing to take up weeks, weekends, and nights at a time to spend time coding and solving a problem. A lot of hackathons actually don't have to do with coding themselves, but also with how you tell the story of your solution. What people lack sometimes when going into hackathons is that storytelling aspect, which is arguably one of the most important parts of a hackathon in my opinion. Being able to converse about how you went about solving it, why this is a problem that needs a solution, how you leverage your unique kind of industry expertise, whether that's through research, etc. You're reading articles, looking at the problem in a different lens that doesn't seem obvious and AI may not have told you. This is a really good skill at brainstorming and it has changed the hackathon climate severely in terms of what is a baseline project. AI is always going to be a resource and it's the best case to use it in these hackathons where you're able to use it to your advantage. You're not going to get scolded for using it, and you can actually see what the limitations are, where you might need to learn more, where you're lacking, and how to take that project to the next level. In terms of how do you win a hackathon, it comes down to one thing: what is the problem that you're solving. Obviously there are going to be tracks and themes in the hackathon, so what is your specific angle? Through iterations of how you got to that part, technical complexities also matter. Your idea can be great, but if your execution is baseline or not at that level, explore different libraries, explore different languages, even create languages. Find a project or find a way to solve a problem that you might not have thought you could get done in a weekend. Trust me, if you really do put your mind to it and you have a good set of friends, you can at least get to I'd say 75 percent of that moonshot project that you were thinking of doing. It does come down to you should have your own ceiling of what you think is possible. Instead think big. Take a step back. What is the actual solution, and are you able to make maybe something that's better than that, a different way of going about it? Of course, how does this impact the actual user that you're working on? Healthcare? Is it useful for doctors? How would you roll that out in the future? Think of it as a startup, which I always think of my hackathon as a startup weekend. I look at: - who's the problem? - what's the problem? - who is having these pains? - what are they doing currently? - how can I alleviate that? - how can I test that this is a real solution? In most cases, I'm not able to talk to actual users, which I do have to sometimes post on Reddit, look at resources online, articles, iterate, and continue. You're going to have many times where you're not going to hit a specific problem or feature that you want, and that's fine. You should be honest and upfront about where you were not able to get to, because that's actually a sign of growth and maturity when you're talking to a judge and just yourself in general. Being able to claim what I was able to do and what I was not able to do is important. Obviously, the limitation here is time, so nobody's expecting you to rebuild Rome in one weekend. If you have the framework or you know the visibility to understand what's next, where could I improve upon this? Had I gone back, maybe I would have made a few different decisions. That's what being a founder is. That's what a hackathon is about. In the end, do more hackathons. There's nothing that's keeping you back, and I recommend people actually do hackathons outside of their comfort zone. There are going to be hackathons within your college, within your city, within your comfort zone, but I would recommend people sometimes travel, whether it's to a neighboring town, neighboring state, across the country. You're only going to get more upside. There are going to be more people that you are going to meet, and you're going to have a nice experience as well, depending on your team. I recommend being diligent in who you have on your team, being understanding of where your capabilities are at, and also have fun. At the end of the day, it is a hackathon. It is an event where people are just trying to make a nice solution. Don't take yourself too seriously, but also enjoy the network that you're creating as you're there.