Over the past year during the lockdown, I have taken the opportunity to become more involved in student-led organizations, from robotics programs to entrepreneurship programs. Through this, I have had the chance to meet many other talented people worldwide, including China, India, Dubai, South Africa, Canada, Taiwan, and several states within the US.
One thing that always intrigues the people I meet most is my involvement in hackathons, both as a participant and as an organizer. Growing up in the Bay Area, I have been surrounded by computer science and all sorts of tech events from elementary school, so I was shocked to see that other people did not have such programs in their areas.
For the past couple of months, I had been thinking about writing a guide (which I am finally doing) to share how people can get involved, what they should expect, and how they can help share the opportunity with others, regardless of geographic location, age/grade, skill level, or anything else; basically, anyone can participate, even you.
A Hackathon is where you come together with motivated people to collaborate on a project, usually done within a certain time period. Most hackathons are 24 to 48 hours but can extend to weeks or months when organized online. Hackers, aka participants, will plan their projects, build them, and present them all within the given time.
Hackathons like to choose themes for their events; Some popular themes include IoT, Climate Change, Education, Health, FinTech, and many more. You can look for hackathons with themes that particularly interest you.
Hackathons are not just about coding and building a project non-stop. There are tons of other things that you can do as well. Most hackathons will have workshops to learn new skills and technologies and speakers to help motivate you on your projects. In addition to that, sponsors and companies sometimes demo their products. Some cool things that I had gotten the chance to demo at hackathons include VR games/demos, beta app testing, chrome extensions, and many other things.
With all Hackathons, your project will be judged at the end of the event. Most hackathons have industry professionals who judge projects and can help give you advice on your projects. Prizes are given based on the best overall projects or use of certain technologies.
Everyone should attend a hackathon, even if you do not want to submit a project. Check out the workshops, listen to speakers, demo products, and browse through project submissions at the end of the event. You can learn more from attending one hackathon than you can in a month's worth of taking a course. Every hackathon is different, so you will build new experiences from each one you attend.
You can meet a ton of new people at hackathons through collaborating on projects, demoing other hackers' projects, and working with mentors and judges. Many hackathons will have mentors or people who are specialized in a certain software who can help you implement that software in your own project.
Many hackathons are incorporating new and interesting formats that are opening the doors to more people. Some include pitch events, ideathons, and makeathons. Pitch Events or Ideathons allow you to pitch an idea to validate it, get feedback on, and improve your idea before you actually began developing it. Makeathons take these events one step further and promote people to make prototypes; these events are generally more hardware focused. You do not need to know how to code to get started on these events!
- Devpost — Ranges from high-school hackathons, college hackathons to company-run hackathons.
- MLH — Student hackathon league with top of the line hackathons, workshops, and events
- Hackhub — Similar to Devpost (new platform: gaining traction in the hackathon community)
Take the first step to attending any of these events is to sign-up. Even if you can only attend half of the event, or you are just going for the workshops, it is a worthwhile experience.
The first time that I attended a hackathon, I didn’t even know what it was or what I had to do, but it was a worthwhile experience that has introduced me further into the world of computer science.
Most of the information that I provided is a general overview of hackathons, applying to both in-person and online events. As opposed to what you may think, online hackathons can still provide similar and quality opportunities.
- More Time — Most hackathons have increased the amount of time given to make your projects from 3-day events to week-long events
- Connecting — Instead of meeting people in person, hackathons are now using slack or discord servers to allow people to connect. Often people will drop a link to their LinkedIn or personal website so people can connect with them.
- Reach — Anyone with access to the internet can now join a hackathon, regardless of where they are in the world
- Flexibility — Workshops and Speaker events are often recorded so you can watch them on your own time, speed them up, or go back to parts that you missed
- Projects — Instead of demoing or meeting in person, you will be documenting your project a lot more and making video presentations.
Online events have their pros and cons, as they open the door for many more people, but in some ways, they take away from the fun of being there in-person.
Invite your friends to come to join you at these events, and also learn through the experience. If you are interested in organizing a hackathon, feel free to reach out to me, and I would be more than happy to connect you with different organizations that host events.
- LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/ishaan-bansal/
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