It’s true that caffeine outputs code. Every programmer’s desire is to stay focused in a bug-free environment, even if it’s overloading ourselves with an absurd amount of coffee. I’m quite fairly young, 17 years old with the desire to become a software engineer in some tech startup. I’ve been told Hackathons are a gateway to the tech field, so I participated with a naive thought of being a fun, pleasurable experience to meet and collaborate with other like-minded individuals.
The sad truth is : I was wrong.
Here I am, 17 years old, already pulling all-nighters and nourishing myself with a brewed drink to keep myself awake at 4 am in the morning as pitch day begins less than 7 hours. Anxiety, stress, and the thought of sleep deprivation over fluctuates my mind during the night, allowing mental breakdowns to occur as the night progresses. Hackathons are no place to be for a kid, especially when it’s pitch day. This gave me a sudden punch in the face as Hackathons are just to stimulate what every startup goes through.
My First Hackathon — 24 hours. Theme: Solve the rising crisis on plant fungus Outcome: Failure. I broke down during pitch day. I let down my friends and embarrassed myself in front judges and a large audience. I stuttered nonsense and began to have a panic attack while I was presenting our application. My team and I ended up being in 5th place, which to my surprise, wasn’t the last place. It seemed to be the last Hackathon I would ever do. Our app was a plant disease detection web app using tracking.js, it spotted infections via distinctive color and patterns given off by taking a picture of the plant and uploading it to our website. My first hackathon ruined my vibe for programming and I began having doubts if software engineering was the right choice for me.
Reasons for Defeat :
The idea was there but not the pitch. Caffeine Addict. I drank 10+ cups of coffee during the night due to stress. May factored in my presentation panic attack. Undermining mindset. I undervalued myself and thought we were way behind of everyone else in the game. Gave me a negative mindset. My Second Hackathon — 7 Days Theme: Sustainable Development Goals. Outcome: International winner & most voted for the best pitch. How did a loser kid win and get upvoted for the best presentation out of 12 nations after a dreadful lose? Easy.
Teamwork makes the dreamwork.
Might be a niche, but it’s true.
Perhaps one of the most crucial moments of my adolescent. This hackathon broke my shell of social anxiety and gave me a new perspective on life. I was paired up with people I don’t know and I wasn’t comfortable with meeting new people. Better yet, 2 of my teammates were non-english speakers/international people, so communication was hard as it is. Yet, we manage to pass all that. The boundaries weren’t strong enough to block an idea we had all envision. We were like-minded individuals who share the same interest, the same passion, and the same goal. So much so, we were flourishing with ideas at midnight and the only fuel to keep us awake was the spark of creativity and the jokes we all share, not the coffee we used to binge on to stay awake.
I was the team leader and one of the forefront of our pitch. They believed that I was the one that can tie ideas together and one of the trustees to lead the presentation in front of hundreds. They were confident and supportive of my role, which eliminated the feeling that I had the last hackathon, which was my undermining mindset.
Even if did not touch a single code, I overlooked the functionality, the visual design, and trajected our idea and creativity into real working software. It was a weird shift from being a programmer to a “project manager” controlling the programmers.
It was a few months after we’ve won I began realizing how crucial my role was in the event. I thought of myself as a person who got lucky getting good teammates and felt I didn’t contribute at all due to no coding. But I was friendly reminded by the words “It couldn’t be done it without you” from my teammates and our mentors which then, it finally ticked me, that I was the one who connected, shared, and inspired our team at midnight. I was the one who motivated our team to keep pushing. Things that I struggled in my first hackathon and my life was what I try to solve during this hackathon with my newly founded team.
Oh, I almost forgot to tell you what the app is all about…
We’ve built an interactive augmented reality mobile app designed for kids in progressing countries to play around with science in a fun, game-like experience. We designed it so that all you need is a smartphone with a camera and a small piece of paper. This way, we can bring the utmost in the learning experience while factoring in conditions of a progressing country environment.
My third Hackathon — 36 Hours Theme: Help the Sea. Outcome: First Place. & some $$$ I’ve learned a lot from my previous hackathon. It taught me lessons and valuable skills to better myself in such environments. This time, I teamed with the people from my first Hackathon. It was an open competition, college and professionals were welcome to participate.
This third hackathon was an exercise of what I’ve learned from my international hackathon and the first one. I’m no longer the social anxious kid I used to be in my first hackathon. I turn ideas into reality and this time, I no longer undervalue myself of challenges that seemed to be impossible. This perspective helped factor in winning first place.
In this hackathon, I’ve experienced the duality of expectations and reality. You need to keep in a note of that short time frame you have. If you have to incorporate the latest tech into your application such as virtual reality, augmented reality, machine learning, or any cool emerging techs, make sure you have the knowledge to do so. Don’t expect you can learn in a short amount of time, otherwise, you will be debugging cryptic code somewhere around 3 am. If you choose this route, expect a minimum viable product.
Conclusion
A winning product is a product that’s like a completed book. The story is there, from start to finish. You’ve incorporated the introduction, crisis, then the climax. It transitions until the very end of the chapter. Once this book is finished, you read it out loud to potential “investors”. In hackathons, we tend to write a J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic high fantasy book trilogy (Lord of the rings) under a short amount of time, but by doing so, would output a tragic tale of overloaded caffeine and mental breakdowns.
Even if you lose a Hackathon, don’t hold a grudge. It’s to stimulate the life of an early tech startup company. Don’t hold the mentality of every company you make will be successful, they tend to crash and burn. But that’s how we learn. The classic ‘trial and error’ learning. The more we do, the more experience we gain, which gives you a lesser chance of error. And with the right mind, the right team, and the right idea, you will go far.
P.S COFEE = CODE. CODE = PROGRESS. PROGRESS = WIN