I organized hackathons on Python, Java, .Net, each of which was attended by 100 to 250 people. As an organizer, I watched the participants from the side and made sure that the hackathon is not only about technology, but also about competent preparation, well-coordinated work and communication. In this article, I have collected the most common mistakes and non-obvious life hacks that will help beginner hackathons prepare for the upcoming season.
Assemble the dream team
Yes, there are singles at hackathons, but I don’t remember a single case when they managed to take prizes. Why? Four people in 48 hours manage to do four times more work than one. The question arises - how should an effective team be staffed? If you have friends in whom you are confident and have gone through fire and water together, everything is clear. What to do if you want to participate, but there is no full team?
In general, there can be two scenarios:
- You are so active that you are ready to find and rally people around you, becoming the leader and captain of the team
- You do not want to bother and are ready to become part of a team that is looking for a person with your profile.
In any case, you need to go through the following steps:
- Analyze the information that is about the task.
The organizers deliberately do not always give full information about the task, so that the teams do not cheat and do not prepare solutions in advance. But almost always, even small introductions are enough to evaluate your current set of knowledge.
For example, the task says that you will need to develop a prototype of a mobile application. And you only have experience with WEB development and design, but bad with backend, database integration and testing. So, it is these knowledge and skills that you need to look for in your potential teammates.
- Look for teammates among friends, acquaintances and colleagues.
If there are those in your social circle who have already won hackathons, freelance or work in a field related to the topic of the assignment, then these guys should be invited to the hackathon in the first place.
- Tell the world about yourself.
If the second point was not enough, then feel free to throw a cry on the social network. Try to be concise and as simple as possible:
"Hi all! I am looking for teammates for hackathon N. We need two ambitious and charged people - an analyst and a frontend. There are already two of us:
- Egor – fullstack developer, winner of hackathon X;
- Anya is a Ux/Ui designer, I work on outsourcing and make web + mobile solutions for clients.
Write in a personal, we need two more heroes in our fantastic four.
You can safely copy the text, replace the names and stacks xD
- Start looking for a team
- Publish a post with an appeal to your social networks (fb, vk, on your blog, if you do)
- Use the chat rooms of old hackathons where you have already participated
- Write in the group of participants of the upcoming hackathon (often the organizers create them in advance)
- Look for groups or events of events (official meetings of the event in vkfb)
Get ready for the hackathon
A ready team is half the battle. The second half is a quality preparation for the hackathon. Usually participants think about preparation before entering the hackathon. But some steps taken in advance can make life easier. It is important to remember that you can spend up to 48 hours at the event site, which means that you must not only not be distracted from focused work, but also organize a comfortable environment for yourself in every possible way. How to do it?
What to take with you:
- Favorite pillow, blanket or sleeping bag for the most avid hackathoners is simply a must have attribute
- Passport and medical policy
- Toothbrush and paste
- Wipes
- Ask the organizers if there is a shower on the site (if yes, take a towel)
- Change of clothes with you
- Replaceable shoes (comfortable sneakers, sneakers, slippers)
- Umbrella
- Painkillers
- Laptop + charger + extension cord
- Power bank for phone
- Adapters, flash drives, hard drives
Make sure that all paid software on your PC is paid for, the necessary libraries are loaded.
How to plan a team
- Determine how you will make decisions in controversial situations. It's best to just vote with your hands and make a general team decision.
- Think about who will monitor the dynamics of your work, facilitate and plan the work of the team, manage communication in the team. Typically, this role in agile teams is performed by the Scrum Master, who oversees the Scrum process. If you are unfamiliar with this role, be sure to google it.
- Set timers every 3-4 hours to keep track of the overall flow of time. Determine for yourself internal checkpoints when you compare watches: what time and what you should have ready in order to have time to do everything not at the last minute.
- It is a mistake to believe that a sleepless night for the whole team will lead you to victory. The longer the hackathon, the more important sleep is. And in general, evening and night are usually the most memorable moments in hackathons: all the most fun and noisy happens right then. Don't get hung up on the code, give yourself a break.
- The organizers often set up a Sony Play Station or XBox, turn on movies, do quests and other parallel activities to create a comfortable emotional environment. Take advantage of these benefits so that your brain does not boil.
- Remember the Pareto rule: 20% of the effort should give you 80% of the result. Think about how much effort you will spend on a particular solution and what effect you can get. The time of the team is limited, the knowledge is also limited, which means that resources need to be allocated efficiently.
Presentation and assessment of your decision
What to consider before the performance?
- Study the evaluation criteria in advance, write them down and keep them in front of you during the decision. Check with them constantly.
- Study the profile of judges and occupation, background. Perhaps, articles on Habré or publications on blogs, on the official pages of companies. Think about what expectations they might have when evaluating. For judges with strong technical experience, it is important to do a code review of your solutions, and an experienced designer will look at user experience and features. The thought seems banal, but for some reason they forget about it.
- Don't forget the power of networking. Your team actually does not consist of 4 people, there are much more of you, you have colleagues and friends. You can use any open legal sources and your connections that you can find. If it helps your decision!
- It will be valuable to talk about the logic of the solution and data sources during the pitch. If you find a non-standard way to test a hypothesis, then tell us about it. This will add value to your solution.
For example, among your friends there was a representative of the target audience and you were able to conduct a smoke test with him. Or you found interesting analytics and reviews that helped you reduce your work time.
- No one ever forbade teams to communicate with each other and test ideas. By the end of the hackathon, no one will steal your idea, which means that some hypotheses can be tested directly on your neighbors.
- Hackathons always have consultants and experts who are there to help you and share their experience. You may not take their comments into work, but getting feedback and looking at the current decision from the side is an important step towards victory.
- Think of a presentation template ahead of time. Make a slide with a profile and information about the team: your photos, contacts, information about education or current work experience. You can add links to github or your portfolio if you want the jury to get to know you better.
- If the task of prototyping and interfaces is planned, pay for marvel or other services in advance so as not to worry about it during the hackathon.
- When you have an understanding of the final decision, then take the time to prepare for the presentation - try to run it several times, take time for the structure and the following additional recommendations.
What to keep in mind while speaking?
- No need to repeat the task and waste precious presentation time, everyone knows the judges and participants.
- At the very beginning, tell us about the key decision and the approach that was applied. This is a cool life hack that is used in business speeches. So you immediately get 100% of the attention of the audience, their interest. And then it will be necessary to structurally tell how you came to this decision, what was the logic, hypotheses, how you tested and selected, what patterns you found and how you can use your solution.
- If a prototype was supposed - show and tell. Think ahead of time about the qr-code link so that viewers can get access.
- Think about the financial implications of your decision. How much money will it save the customer? How to reduce time to market, client NPS, etc.? It is important to show that you have not only a good technical solution, but also an economically viable one. This is the same business value.
- Do not delve into the technical component too deeply. If the judges have questions about the code, algorithms and models, they will ask. If you think some information is very important, add it to a special slide and hide it at the end in case of questions. If the judges have no questions, initiate a dialogue yourself and tell us about what else is left behind the scenes of your performance.
- A good performance is where each member of the team spoke and spoke. Ideally, if everyone covers the scope of tasks that they have done.
- Live performances seasoned with a good sense of humor are always better than perfectly rehearsed monologues from the stage 🙂
Nutrition hacks
A few life hacks about nutrition, because it really affects your well-being, mood and energy. There are two main rules here:
- Protein fills you up and makes you feel full. This is fish, poultry, cottage cheese.
- Carbohydrates provide energy. Fast carbohydrates - a quick release of energy and its sharp decline, drowsiness appears after pasta, potatoes, meatballs, chips, etc. And complex carbohydrates (buckwheat, oatmeal, bulgur) are slowly absorbed and gradually saturate you with energy. Like a battery, they will feed you.
Therefore, if you want to be in a great mood during the hackathon, forget about unhealthy snacks, cola, snickers and chocolate. A hearty breakfast with porridge in the morning, cereals for lunch and protein, and in the evening - vegetables and protein. The best drink is water, and instead of coffee, it is better to drink tea - it has more caffeine and will certainly invigorate the body and spirit.
OK it's all over Now. Hope it was helpful!
By the way, in September we are holding a Raiffeisenbank hackathon for java developers (and not only).
Come and meet in person 😉
Source: habr.com