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Hackathons. How to get the most out and survive

Good day to all!

My name is Alexander Mikhalin - I am a .NET developer at Reksoft. Behind me there are 7 hackathons, one as a member of the jury. I did not sleep for 8 nights, drank 52 cups of coffee, 15 cans of red bull, 24 people visited the team with me. Today I want to tell you everything about hackathons. Well, or almost everything.


Photo provided by the VKontakte team .

In the article I want to share with you my experience of participating in hackathons, as well as give the most valuable, in my opinion, tips that could potentially help increase your chances of winning.

I will not focus on what hackathons are. This topic is pretty well covered.tEarthin the article .

Under the cut:

  • My story
  • Motivation to participate
  • Tips & Tricks

My story


Hackathons for me are something special, they began my journey in IT, and I am grateful to every person who helped me in this matter: he exchanged a few phrases with me over a cup of tea during the hackathon, or was a member of my team. You are all cool, seriously. No exceptions!

At the moment, I participated in 6 hackathons as a participant and 1 time was in the role of technical expert and jury member. The first attempts left much to be desired, but from each event I tried to benefit, experience, valuable acquaintances. Somewhere we all together committed the team 5 minutes before the end, somewhere after half the hackathon had no idea what, in fact, we want to write. Somewhere we hardly slept. But it was never boring!



In my last year of undergraduate studies, I first heard about an event such as hackathons. I went into the VKontakte group of one of these events. Realizing that I needed a team, I got in touch with one guy from the group. He, like me, was without a team. We agreed to participate together, and at the hackathon two more girls joined us, who were also looking for a team. And so 4 people who first came to the hackathon, organized a team and began their fascinating journey. Of course, we vaguely imagined what should happen in the end. Mentors came to the rescue - I never missed the opportunity to consult and chat with more experienced people. Protected the project. Of course, they didn’t win anything, but they didn’t fall face to face in the mud. And most importantly - this was our first acquaintance with the hackathons.

Further, the composition has already changed a little, and we sent to conquer Moscow (there was a rather serious selection on applications). We arrive very early, walk around the capital, get ready to light! This was, perhaps, our first hackathon of the all-Russian scale, where people from all over the country gathered. We still came more for experience, although deep down we always hoped for victory. This experience again gave us a lot of new acquaintances, the performance turned out to be more collected, made fewer mistakes than last time. This time we went to the final part of the hackathon.

Separately, I want to talk about hackathons VKontakte. These are the most memorable events on my way. Perhaps because they are held in the city where I live - in St. Petersburg, and most often - this is the main headquarters of the Hermitage, the Manege, or other historical buildings. They reign in some indescribable atmosphere, the most serious teams come from all over Russia. As a rule, the selection of applications for such hackathons is even more stringent, as there are many people who want to participate, and places are limited. And if you have passed the selection for such an event - be sure that this weekend will give you many positive aspects. I took part in VKontakte hackathons with different teams in 2018 and 2019, we solved different cases from leading companies, looked at the projects of other participants, talked with developers from VKontakte. In general, it was cool!

And now let's smoothly move on to the topic of “motivating participants.”

Motivation to participate


The most obvious is the motivation for beginners in programming. To begin with, in programming, as you know, there is a high threshold for entry, and it grows every day. More and more materials are appearing, which means that guys who want to connect their lives with development have to pump more and more skills to get a precious first offer. With the help of the hackathon, you can get a cool line in your resume, 24-48 hours of practice, good motivation and become part of a cool event. The worst thing here may be the lack of a team or insecurity due to a banal lack of experience (“Does everyone already have a lot to do, where do we go?”).

Believe me, it’s not difficult to find a team, from any IT chat, including the chat of this particular hackathon (as in my case), to your friends or classmates who also want to get their first development experience. Go ahead, team them up and light them up! The problem of uncertainty will go away over time. You should remember that everyone started from something, were mistaken, did not have time for deadlines, and this is normal. Just believe in yourself and win!

And if the teams of beginners go for experience, then the programming mastodons are not averse to seriously competing for prizes - 100-500 thousand rubles per team for first place. And, of course, special attention and attitude to the winner - honor, praise and job offers. Once I saw the participants for 70 years, and their eyes burned from the prospect of doing something new. Hackathons are a very warm and friendly party. Here I will be glad to everyone who has the desire and motivation to develop cool things.

Tips & Tricks


Idea


An idea is more than half the hackathon. This is perhaps the main advice. Think through the idea as much as possible. Go to the hackathon website and carefully read the tasks that the organizers want to solve. The idea should completely solve the task and put into the soul of all who read it. Nobody will scold you if you suddenly do not implement any of the principles of SOLID when developing a prototype. But if your idea is not fully developed, it’s wrong - then there is almost no chance of winning. If you think about it, even the initial selection for participation is, in fact, a selection of ideas. Everyone also understands that in 48 hours you can’t make a good prototype, so you won’t be scolded for not having created your facebook from scratch in 48 hours. The only important point here - do not declare the functionality that you do not have time to implement.In this case, your decision will lose points.

Preparing a quality presentation


You will have no more than 5 minutes to charm the jury with your idea. Think in advance of a high-quality presentation design, beautiful and clear texts, fonts. Select a person for the presentation of the idea and drive out a speech with him. An investment of 1-2 hours during a hackathon in a presentation will increase your chances of winning. Agree, it’s logical to think - a hackathon, an event for developers and, accordingly, you need to spend all the time on the code. Only now your work will not be seen behind the ideal prototype, if a person without preparation and on a white background represents what you have been anxiously developing all this time.

Prototype development


Everything is pretty simple here. The prototype application must be ready. The declared functionality must be implemented. Design should delight the eye and catch the souls of the jury. Very cool, if at the same time you wrote the code in the best traditions of Robert Martin, following all the best practices. Seriously, really cool! But this moment, in my opinion, is secondary.

Planning


Time is strictly limited, the schedule is scheduled by the hour, you know this in advance. Plan ahead and discuss the plan with the team from the first to the last hour of development. Take time to sleep and presentation. And clearly follow the plan. Think over all the little things, potential bottlenecks of your application. And you will not spend a lot of time on rallies within the team due to falling into a stupor. At our first hackathons, we let this item drift, and after that we rewrote the ill-conceived pieces of code several times - but we could sleep. Leave time to fix bugs, to check, think about what you can potentially catch in time for a particular moment.

Team


First, look at the requirements for the number of people in a team. As a rule, this number is three to five. Let's say you put together a team of 5 people. Let's take an example of a “grocery” hackathon where you wanted to write a web application. The roles immediately beg - front-end, back-end, designer. In theory, a captain can be any person, regardless of their role in the project. Some teams highlight the role of captain as a project manager, freed from development. Also, someone takes an expert on the topic of hackathon into his team - one who understands the banking business, if it is a hackathon from the bank. In addition, devops are sometimes taken, but these are usually rare cases. It’s clear with the developers, everything here, as in standard development — tasks, microprints. Taking a designer team is an effective step. You will have a manwhich will be busy with rendering screens, in short, the role that developers don’t really want to be distracted by - there is a risk of not having time to finish everything. Also, the designer can be both the speaker and the captain - he is aware of the entire project and, as a rule, makes beautiful presentations. At one of the hackathons, we and the other team realized almost the same thing, but they had a designer in their team who drew beautiful screens and made a beautiful presentation. As a result, the guys were given one of the prizes. General recommendation - study the requirements for the composition of the team and assemble a convenient team for yourself so that all problem areas are closed and everyone understands what he has to do.and captain - he is aware of the entire project and, as a rule, makes beautiful presentations. At one of the hackathons, we and the other team realized almost the same thing, but they had a designer in their team who drew beautiful screens and made a beautiful presentation. As a result, the guys were given one of the prizes. General recommendation - study the requirements for the composition of the team and assemble a convenient team for yourself so that all problem areas are closed and everyone understands what he has to do.and captain - he is aware of the entire project and, as a rule, makes beautiful presentations. At one of the hackathons, we and the other team realized almost the same thing, but they had a designer in their team who drew beautiful screens and made a beautiful presentation. As a result, the guys were given one of the prizes. General recommendation - study the requirements for the composition of the team and assemble a convenient team for yourself so that all problem areas are closed and everyone understands what he has to do.General recommendation - study the requirements for the composition of the team and assemble a convenient team for yourself so that all problem areas are closed and everyone understands what he has to do.General recommendation - study the requirements for the composition of the team and assemble a convenient team for yourself so that all problem areas are closed and everyone understands what he has to do.


Photo provided by the VKontakte team .

Sleep


Sleep is far from the last important point. The most hollywood theme for hackathons. To sleep or have time before the deadline is a temptation, where it is very difficult to give a completely correct answer. As a person who was on both sides of the barricades, I can only highlight my opinion on this topic.

My opinion is definitely to sleep. There are many reasons, from the most commonplace to those that you only realize with experience. We are all people, and for fruitful brain activity we need rest and unloading. In addition, your main goal is to have fun, experience, productive skills. But what to do, because time is strictly limited, and how can you fall asleep when you think only that an unexpected pile of bugs has appeared? Perhaps it is better to swallow the power engineer - and on the road to victory? Even in this case, the most effective solution will be a 6-hour dream, after which enter the battle with renewed vigor. You will be surprised, but after sleep new ideas will come, things will go easier. This is especially true for 48-hour hackathons. An exception, perhaps, if you caught a courage, everything turns out, cool music plays in the headphones, you rush to victory without a single hint of sleep. But fresh air, sleep, water,nutrition - still remain important topics that should not be neglected. To stand for 10 minutes in the fresh air in the morning in front of the building where the hackathon is held is also extremely useful.


Never, under any circumstances. You came to compete, and that’s why you should be proud of yourself. Even if everything is flying down the drain and you want to close the laptop, go home - do not panic. You are not losing absolutely nothing. Take into account the mistakes and avoid them at the next hackathon. Talk with technical experts, throw a couple of phrases with the jury after the performance. This is a great opportunity to get instant feedback. My first hackathon was not successful in terms of the prize, but I managed to talk with the mentor after him, and he advised me to read Jeffrey Richter's book “CLR via C #” for career development. And for sure, it is one of the key for every .NET developer, for example, after reading this book, I began to better understand the structure of the .NET platform, which allowed me to work more effectively with it.You may well find on a hackathon such a mentor who has serious experience in your programming language, and get similar effective advice for yourself. Remember - the experience of defeats teaches us much more than the experience of victories. Do not be afraid to make mistakes, do not be afraid to lose, do not be afraid that it will be hard - this means that you are going in the right direction!

Conclusion


In conclusion, I want to once again recall the most important points:

  • Do not be afraid to start participating in hackathons;
  • the idea is more than half the hackathon;
  • prepare a beautiful and high-quality presentation;
  • develop a prototype with the declared functionality;
  • Take time to plan;
  • effectively form a team;
  • do not forget about the dream;
  • never give up!

See you at the hackathons!


Photo provided by the VKontakte team .

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