💡 Idea to 🏆 Award in 24 hours — Winning a State-Wide Hackathon.
💡 Idea to 🏆 Award in 24 hours. Our incredible story of winning the Hack Revolution 2022 Hyderabad conducted by Computer Society of India (CSI) and Entrepreneurship cell (Project demo in the end).
This is a long article but read till the end to know my past hackathon experiences, specially juniors (Engineering 3rd years and earlier).
Note : I’m enrolled in a 4-year engineering program (B.E in CS)
How it all started:
- As a child, I enjoyed the Hyderabadi Numaish or nampally exhibition a lot and it was finally opening again after 2 years so I was following it in the news. Suddenly it gets cancelled and traders face loss in Crores. I heard them speak in the media and felt their pain. I wished there was something I could do to solve their problem.
- After an hour or so, I read an article “A live-stream event in China sells products worth $2 Billion in just 12 hours with 250Million people attending it online”, sounds familiar? does it?
- I join the above two experiences and that's when the 💡idea of a Virtual Exhibition comes. Ahead of Facebook’s metaverse launch, there couldn’t possibly be a better time for this.
Jan 7th 10:47 PM — I call Wajid(Classmate who is an app developer), share the Idea and ask him if I’m the only one thinking this is brilliant? He asks me to research if it’s actually possible to implement.
Jan 7th 11:05 PM — I call Shahbaaz (Classmate who is a game developer) and ask him if he could help out with the Virtual Reality implementation, we could handle the e-commerce part, and he gives the green signal.
Jan 7th 11:45 AM — Three of us have a conference call for 35 mins discussing the idea and finalizing the decision to participate (Most of it was trying to convince Wajid to get up early and actually arrive at the venue)
Jan 8th 7:53 AM — I reach the event and register the team. We start with making the abstract and discussing the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) implementation. Wajid and I start working on Flutter for the E-Commerce side of the project and Game Developer Shahbaaz starts working on making the virtual reality part using the Unity Game Engine. The judges made their first round of Evaluation by visiting all teams and asking for an intro to their ideas. All 4 of the judges got a feel of the teams, their ideas and execution strategies. (Pro tip: First round is very important because this is the first impression of your project in front of the judges)
Jan 8th 1:00 PM — We realize we made a huge 🚨BLUNDER🚨 the plugin the integrates Flutter 🔁 Unity wasn’t updated by its developer and we just spent 4 hours debugging it, HALF of the hackathon time was over and we had absolutely nothing to show 🤦♂️. The air was filled with despair, we were sure there was absolutely no way we could win. To make matters worse the judges came for the second round of evaluation and this time focused on progress of teams and whether or not they are executing what they actually said in round 1. We just showed what Shahbaaz had made till then which was an empty ground with a few 3D models of shops. The judges seemed very disappointed and that made us even more demotivated.
Wajid suggested we leave everything and just go home, in fact on his insistence even Shahbaaz started packing his bags. But I believed in the idea. I didn’t want to give up so easily so I convinced Shahbaaz to continue working on the Virtual side and took Wajid out for a walk.
I explained to him why I think I have a chance and managed to convince him. This is where I had an opportunity to learn leadership. Sometimes its just as simple as convincing your teammates to trust your vision.
Jan 8th 3:30 PM — We come back after eating a full plate of Hyderabadi Chicken Biryani (provided by the organizers). Trust me biryani really clears your head. While eating we decided to completely scrap the Flutter part and focus on the Virtual part and build the whole idea using Unity. Pivoting ideas is very important in a Hackathon and it’s never too late until the last evaluation round.
Jan 8th 4:00 PM — Shahbaaz blasts some synthwave music into his ears and enters flow state (in other words he completely focused on building the virtual world of the virtual exhibition). Wajid and I helped him by sending resources he needed to add in the 3D space. Including finding an absolutely amazing 3D Model of Charminar (as shown in the demo below).
left: Shahbaaz, middle: Wajid, Right: Me
Jan 8th 8:00 PM — The time for the 3rd and final round was finally here. There was a huge crowd surrounding the judges. Eyes glued to the participants work and their pitch to the judges. The ambience was tense. Finally it was our turn, I was ready standing with my PPT. As soon as the judge came I started with a “Good afternoon sir my name is…” and he practically ignores me and goes straight to the laptop with the project running. He starts asking detailed questions about Unity and how we made it. After what felt like an eternity, he says “good job” and disappears. The moment he said “good job” I took a sigh of relief. “At least we got some appreciation, we can work with this” this is all that was in my mind.
Jan 8th 10:40 PM — The prize announcement ceremony commences and our team name “Metaverse” was awarded as the best team out of 47 other teams! 🎉
This was a pure hackathon experience, all we knew before the event was the Idea. We had no clue about what technologies we’re gonna use, project abstract, presentation, pitch absolutely nothing.
In fact, when we entered the event we had only two things in mind :
- There’s a problem
- By the end of the event we’re building a solution.
The secret I’ve learned : Go to a Hackathon because you have an idea not the other way round. This idea pulled me to the hackathon, it was just too good to miss.
Note : This applies only if you want to win. However, for experience, networking and motivation hackathons are great events.
My history with hackathons.
2018 Hackathon — first year — brought my laptop, registered myself, sat down then realized a very important thing, I didn’t know anything. Had to exit and had nothing to show.
2020 Hackathon — second year — worked really hard, built a full-stack web application, gave my 110%. Judge comes and says I have no idea what I’m doing and the project is absolute trash straight to my face. Eliminated in first round. Decided it was my last hackathon, or was it?
2022 Hackathon — had no intention of attending, 24 hours before the hackathon an idea 💡clicks. It was too perfect to miss. This time I wasn’t coming to win an award, I genuinely wanted to solve the problem and that’s all I cared about. In fact, every round we thought we were going to be the first team to be eliminated.
Ended up winning the 🏆 First Prize. My reaction when the result was announced was not just because my team won, it was the realization of the progress I had made. From exiting in 2018 because I knew absolutely nothing to winning first prize among 47 teams in 2022. I know this is cliché but Never Give Up Iterating or trying new ways to improve and my story is an example of why it works.
The only reason I’m writing this is because I know there are students who gave their 110% and couldn’t make it. It sucks, I know, the 2020 hackathon was the worst day of my engineering life. Learn from your mistakes and try harder next time, the first spot in the next hackathon is yours and no one can take that from you.
I am a Software Developer who is obsessed with producing clean and maintainable code following well-known Software Architectures. I write about problems I have faced myself and how I improved overtime. If you’d like to see more such articles, make sure to subscribe and become a member for more content like this!
Till next time, folks ! astalavista !
