How to win a hackathon without coming in first place
strdr4605.github.io
strdr4605.github.io
Your kind sounds like the original spirit of the hackathon, just a bunch of people making things together.
I like your idea of a hackathon. Might just arrange something like this post-Covid.
Also the whole C-suite takes part in the judging so it really is an opportunity to show off your work.
My team was comprised of CS undergrads and we made something that was technically interesting but not at all marketable. This was fine with us, as we were there to have fun. To us, that was "winning".
However, another team was clearly there to win. Their "leader" was a CS grad student, and they were developing an iOS app that would show you a random weighted complete graph. The task for the human was to build a hamiltonian cycle with minimum edge weight sum, i.e. they had to solve a TSP. Their app only showed very small graphs (<= 5 nodes IIRC) with significant edge weight disparities, such that it was usually trivial to find the correct solution. During their presentation they went on to say that they were using the solved puzzles as input for an AI that could then be used to solve larger TSPs. This was very interesting and valuable they said, as the TSP is relevant for delivery companies, logistics etc.
That grad student must have known that it was pure nonsense, but they actually won. There were people from pretty reputable tech companies in the jury, yet they won.
My teammates and I weren't mad though; to us, and some CS students from other teams who clearly knew what was going on, it was pretty funny.
Of course details depend on the judging rules of the particular contest - you "market" your project differently when there's a panel of jurors and differently if it's the contesters that vote on each other's projects. In contests with panels of jurors you can often predict which project each jury member will likely vote on based solely on their professional background.
I've been to countless game jams and my first win (after a long while) was with a simple one-gimmick game that barely managed to not crash during the presentation. If you're there to have fun with technical stuff, you have small (but non-zero) chance of winning, because perfecting your presentation is rarely what people who go to hackathons for fun consider fun ;)
TBH, the best jams often have no voting and no prizes at all :)
Honestly, that'd be a fun hackathon in of itself. You'd declare this the stated goal, and at the end of the hackathon there'd be big, dramatic presentations. You'd bring in a half dozen judges who would not be informed of the hackathon's purpose who would judge the projects in earnest, and you could have a couple more judges who'd be judging primarily on the audacity of the fiction.
The problem was that the technology was all fiction.
Part of the problem is, the entire idea of making the “next big thing”, which will make millions of dollars, in just 48 hours is ridiculous. Even just coming up with the idea is kind of a stretch, but making any sort of prototype and presentation which would seek this idea is very, very rare.
I like the concept of a “game jam” better, because then you’re just making games. Or something like that, where the entire goal is to make a toy project. But then it’s harder to get approval and/or funding, I guess.
My strategy:
0. Try to recruit a diverse team, you really only need 1, max 2 engineers. If it's an industry hackathon, try to get an industry expert/insider.
1. Try to identify competitions that less people will compete for. For example, everyone does the fun crypto/AI/ML competitions. Without knowing anything about the space, I'm 2 for 2 at supply chain industry focused competitions.
2. Focus on the business solution and your presentation before the code.
3. Focus on frontend/visual code and sponsor APIs before backend code, the backend can almost always be hardcoded.
4. Save time to do a good writeup, readme, take pictures and videos, etc. Explain what you built clearly using multiple forms of media.
Judges looking to enhance the most valuable grouping of their social circle will select them.
Triply so if you have VCs judging. They need money more than ideas.
So yeah, what is winning, it only really ment we had the most charismatic presentation
Oh! The problems charisma can solve. THAT is a book right there.
It has never been too appealing to me to work for a couple of days under time crunch, which is what I always thought hackathons were. The author has done over 30 of them though, so there must be something else that draws people in.
Last time I did one I ended up not really attaching myself to a team at all because I had some family issues come up early in the weekend that needed sorting out, and I think that ended up being the most fun I've had at a hackathon - I spent the entire weekend just chatting to people, and occasionally helping out teams with issues they were having where I had some experience. It turned into a mentorthon, which is honestly much more satisfying.
There were a ton of benefits to me personally.
I got to see a ton of different working styles and tech stacks. I got exposed to a lot of the more “playful” side of the technologist’s Internet. I got to see what it took to rapidly stand up a winning “demo,” while it being completely obvious to us (the winners) that we didn’t have the best idea OR best implementation of an idea.
Most of all, though, it was really fun to meet technologists from all walks of life and party with them, drinking too much alcohol and caffeine in a high-pressure environment. It made for a great way to bond with a bunch of people when I was otherwise just a disconnected hobbyist.
I think the tone of the hackathon is really important. I’ve only ever done non-profit based hackathons: art, civics, etc. where the central task is on the order of “what cool or fun thing can we do to make the world more beautiful, more fun, or just better?”
Also, it’s an excuse for people to try out ideas and stacks that they weren’t otherwise willing to give themselves time to explore.
very nicely said.
Events are more just workshops / hanging out, with projects being more of a secondary thing.
I’ve never participated in a hackathon with a 1st prize worth over $500, and I’m not sure I’d want to. But I guess if I had a bunch of random unmonetized projects sitting around then entering them into high-prize-value hackathons could be a way to shop them around. I’m just not sure why an organization would call an event like that a “hackathon.”
total
Turns out you code better when well rested.
At my previous employer, we did 2 hackathons a year. They were structured so that you could go hard on something you cared a lot about if you wanted to, or you could walk around checking out the (often pretty novel and cool) projects that the teams were working on. There was free food, karaoke, one time there was a cover band playing dance music. If you didn’t want to do a hackathon project, you could take a course on Lynda or Pluralsight, or just goof off and hang out. However, it was a sort of “enforced holiday” where normal day-to-day work was halted.
Sometimes people would work on an incremental quality-of-life improvement to the product that normally wouldn’t be prioritized, with the goal of actually getting them into the product. I’d usually start teams doing really ambitious projects with lots of whiz-bang stuff with the goal of getting the product folks to think bigger about where our product could go. It was a lot of fun, and I think more companies should run hackathons this way.
Also, for some people working for a couple of days under time crunch is the best way to spark their creative output (which may or may not be a sign of possible ADHD, by the way ;])
Winning a Hackathon is more about impressing the audience than technical prowess. I've seen more Hackathons won with a presentation than I ever have with code.
Notes:
- This was one of many I snuck into after I had dropped out of college
- It was a mobile app that let you scan an ISBN and would pirate the book for you. The results were sourced from your usual trackers, so 1% of the time it would work and 99% of the time you'd get <NSFW>.
Here's my quick list for how to win a hackathon:
1. Pick team mates who are rock stars (I had at least one "10X" programmer on each of my winning hackathon teams). This is probably the most important point. Nothing is more important than who you choose as a team mate.
2. Pick a project that is easy to explain that also captures peoples imagination. The more people that your idea resonates with, the better.
3. Make use of frameworks and toolkits. Now is NOT the time to learn a new language (if you want to win). The faster you can stand up a functioning prototype, the better.
4. Put together an awesome demo. I've literally seen someone win a hackathon with an amazing presentation and zero working code before. Don't underestimate the importance of the presentation!
In the early days of college hackathons (2011-2013), they were very much TechCrunch disrupt style. You were there to build something and win. Staff was incredibly unhelpful. It was the farthest thing from a learning experience I can remember.