What is a Hackathon?
A hackathon is an event, usually lasting for a couple of days, where groups of people come together to collaboratively work on a project, often in the field of technology. The goal of a hackathon is to develop innovative solutions to a specific problem or challenge.
During a hackathon, participants work in teams to develop a working prototype or application, often with the help of mentors and industry experts. Hackathons typically have a specific theme or focus, such as healthcare, social justice, or sustainability, and participants are encouraged to come up with creative and innovative solutions that address these challenges.
At the end of the event, teams present their projects to a panel of judges, who evaluate the solutions based on criteria such as creativity, functionality, and potential impact. Prizes are often awarded to the winning teams, which may include cash prizes, mentorship opportunities, or other forms of support to help further develop their ideas.
Diversion2k23
Kolkata’s first in-person MLH hackathon, Diversion2k23 was the first hackathon that I ever attended. It was an outstanding experience, we met a bunch of amazing folks from the tech community, learnt a lot from them, learnt about a lot of technologies like Web3, and learnt a lot about ourselves too. Since we were a team of 4 and we had 36 hours so we divided the work, 2 guys were handling the coding part, 1 guy was responsible for the documentation part and I was solely responsible for the UI/UX part.
As I mentioned above that this was our first hackathon so we hadn't planned anything, we didn't even know what we were gonna build when we entered the coding area. Then it crossed our minds that we are currently attending a hackathon so why not build a website about the same? We started working on our website a couple of hours passed, we interacted with the mentors and we learnt that our project should also target and solve a problem, so, again after a 30-minute brainstorming session we decided why to build a website for a single hackathon, instead, let's build a platform for hackathons where organisations may come and list their hackathons and interested folks from the community can register for the hackathons they are interested in.
Also, as a cherry on top, we had a solid networking and connection-building experience there.
Our Project
We named of hackathon platform Binge.
At Binge, We Binge Code.
Binge is inspired by platforms like MLH, but we a solving a big problem here. Sadly, most of the hackathon organising bodies are mostly limited to tier-1 cities and folks from tier-2 and tier-3 cities miss this opportunity, this is where we come in, Binge provides a platform for small-scale organisations which conduct hackathons and connects them to interested folks because there are tonnes of people in these small towns who are super enthusiastic and passionate about these hackathons but are unable to get the exposure. With Binge, this is how we are giving back to the community.
This is what we created at Diversion2k23, we were facing some issues in hosting our website on GitHub so here is a video instead.
In the deciding moments of the hackathon, we were running against the clock, there were only a couple of minutes left, and the adrenaline was rushing through our system, we published our project when there were only 44 seconds left to publish.
Connecting with people
Hackathons are not only about competition and project building. It's also equally important to interact and network with the folks, and this is exactly what we did too.
We met with Ryan Swift, Director of Events at Major League Hacking. It was a pretty amazing experience to interact and discuss our project with him, he praised our project too.
We also met a bunch of amazing folks from the community.
Key Takeaways
Take the first step, and get involved, that's the most important thing. Don't think about what your skills are, what you know, or what you don't, just get involved, and put yourself out there. In our team too, out of the 4 guys, no one knows anything about Back-End Development but we still went for it, we built what we could by just using HTML and CSS.
Decide beforehand what you're gonna build and what problem it will solve, this is also very important.
Before starting divide the work and responsibilities among the team members.
Interact, connect and network with the people there, that's an investment of a lifetime.
Also, you get pretty amazing swags by attending these hackathons so that's a big plus point too.
Alright folks, hope you had a good read.
This is Utkarsh Krishna
Signing-off.