Hackathons in the IT industry: how to choose, prepare and win even in a crisis

Briefly about history

One of the very first hackathons in the world is the ICPC Student Programming Championship,

organized in the late 1970s.At the same time, programmers gathered so-called LAN parties to play and hold tournaments. In June 1999, OpenBSD first used the term hackathon to refer to a development competition involving ten of their programmers. Colleagues liked the name, and a few days later Sun Microsystems held a similar conference called The Hackathon, where they invited participants to write Java programs for their new Palm V.

Now hackathons attract and unite companies and specialists on an international scale and increasingly become a driver for the creation of new products.

Choosing: what hackathons are there?

Globally, hackathons can be divided intointernational and national. The first gather interesting participants from all over the world and provide access to new projects, cases and contacts of foreign employers. Well-known organizers of hackathons of this scale: AngelHack, TechCrunch.

National and regional competitionsorganized and sponsored by local companies. In Russia, one of the most popular organizers is Russian Hackers (HackMoscow), and the guys from Digital Breakthrough are organizing a large-scale all-Russian megahackathon, which consists of regional stages.

The format of the competition can be offline (onorganized site) or completely take place online. Corporations organize internal hackathons to develop initiatives, products and pump their specialists: Microsoft, Google, Facebook and others. Every year, Dropbox hosts HackWeek, where employees work on their ideas for seven days. In Russia, hackathons for employees are organized by Mail.ru Group, Yandex, Sberbank and other large companies.

International League of Student Hackathons (MLH)holds competitions for proactive students. In partnership with MLH, Russian Hackers organize Local Hack Day, Unilever Chain Reaction, which brings together more than 800 students and schoolchildren.

Hackathons are becoming more and morehighly specialized or not related to IT at all. For example, MedHack and DigitalHealth are organized in digital medicine, UrbanHack and GeoHack, GreenHack for journalists and many others are organized to solve problems of urbanism and geoinformatics.

Who needs participation and why

The hackathons are attended by both students andalready operating development teams. Everyone wants to try their hand at a competition, write a product or a new feature in a short time, promote an existing startup, acquire useful contacts, students get an internship, and experienced teams get a chance to develop the project. On the other hand, both large companies and startups can act as case holders. Their goals: find talent with burning eyes, see options for implementing their ideas and launch a pilot project with the most productive teams.

How to choose a hackathon?

When choosing a hackathon, there are a few things to consider in order to get the expected result and rewarding experience:

  1. The scale of the competition.Beginners are not advised to choose large hackathons, so as not to get lost in a hundred teams and not fly out before the second checkpoint.
  2. Hackathon themeand the focus of the cases should be consistent with the skills, interests and goals of the participants.
  3. Expert participation and supportimportant for feedback and valuable information.
  4. Explore the partners of the event:participants can receive bonuses in the form of access to resources, courses and other bonuses.
  5. Geography.When choosing a foreign hackathon, you need to considerlanguage barrier and competition. If there are difficulties with the language, it will be very difficult to collect information on the case, make a pitch and sell the idea to the jury. In addition, you will have to compete with teams from all over the world, different cultures and approaches. The advantages are unique experience and new acquaintances. But we recommend that you first practice in a local hackathon. The rest of the complexity depends on the organizer and the tasks assigned.

What to do if you are a student and there is no team

Participation in hackathons is open to everyone, includingincluding for students. The team can be found before the competition: usually the organizers create chats in which everyone describes their skills, goals and how they can be useful. If the team captain likes you, they will contact you.

Tip:if you are completely new to IT and just wantTo find out from the inside what a hackathon is, it is better to gather a team of friends in advance. Most come for victory and are looking for experienced players, so finding a team of unfamiliar participants will not be so easy.

How to prepare for a hackathon

The most common hackathon format is––compete for two days without a break. It’s easier to prepare for this, but if the hackathon lasts three days or more, it’s worth checking your Internet bill in advance, stocking up on food, turning off automatic software updates on your computer, and setting up a sleeping area on your desk.

If we are talking about an offline platform, then experiencedParticipants recommend bringing sleeping bags, snacks, change of clothes and a toothbrush. And they also note that for good health you need the right food - proteins and carbohydrates. For the brain to solve the problem, you need to provide yourself with basic needs (although sleep will still have to be limited).

A full description of the case with requirements is publishedat the start of the hackathon. Only the topic, the case company and the product format are known in advance - this will help determine whether the team will cope with the task from a technical point of view.

To prepare for a competition, you need to be intopic: regularly read articles, follow trends and new products on the topic of the selected hackathon. It’s quite difficult to win a prize in a hackathon on neural networks and AI if you’ve never encountered it before. Before the hackathon, analyzing similar cases and products will help broaden your horizons. Studying best practices and other people's experiences will help you understand how best to implement an idea, approach a solution and sell.

If the preliminary description of the case containsthere is enough information to answer the question "What exactly we will not do", then be sure to create such a list - during the hackathon at some point you will want to make all the features that come to mind.

Preparation checklist

  1. Gather a team with burning eyes (back andfront-end developers, product manager, designer - this is the minimum plan), who are initially ready for extreme conditions (the moment of devastation during the hackathon will surely come).
  1. Prepare the infrastructure in advance: deploy a server, deployment, task manager and everything you need for work.
  1. Formulate several hypotheses to solve the problem, talk to experts in the required field, if possible.
  1. Prepare a presentation template, including a visual one, and a pitch plan.
  1. Before the hackathon, agree with the team about the processes, schedule, areas of responsibility and basic rules for participation.
  1. Get enough sleep, refresh yourself and tune in to victory!

What common mistakes do teams make?

  1. Not sleeping is a bad idea. It is very important to be able to restore resources.
  2. Develop an idea within the team without asking for the support of experts and mentors: they will give valuable feedback, as well as take part in the evaluation of the work, which will increase the chances of winning.
  3. Trying to develop an ideal product: at a hackathon it is important to present a working idea and justify its value; it is ineffective to waste time on the implementation of all functions.
  4. Make a bad presentation: you need to learn how to properly structure and draw cool slides. Learn best practices for startup pitches.
  5. Don't meet the timing of the pitch: rehearse the text ahead of time, cut down on unnecessary information and leave the gist.

Insights for victory

  1. Conducting customer development will helpask clear questions to experts during consultations and understand the essence of the case problem. Involve not only hackathon experts in custdev, but also your acquaintances if they have relevant experience and expertise.
  2. Find a great designer: Great product design and presentation influence perception and results.
  3. Enlist the support of experts and mentors: study their expertise and communicate with case holders from different fields.
  4. Follow the questions of competing teams in general chats or sessions - you can guess what ideas and technologies they are using.
  5. Learn how to pitch a product.

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