Surviving Your First Hackathon: A Cleverett Girl's Guide

Like I mentioned last time, I recently participated in my first Hackathon. It was part of the eMERGE Americas conference, which ended up being pretty freaking sweet. What is it about really successful people admitting they've totally screwed up that is so inspiring? Another post for another time perhaps.

Anyways! So my first hackathon. I wasn't nervous until I got there and saw all the other very eager coders, representatives from Facebook and Visa (to name a couple) that I started to get really antsy. I had never seen a room so packed with people who do what I want to do; a room so packed with people who take what I want to do so seriously. In a word, it was overwhelming as shit. So, I came up with some pointers that may or may not help another noob out there about to experience their first hackathon.

1. Know Your Strengths.
Only you know what you can and cant do. A hackathon is a great time and place to test out some newly acquired skills or just hone in on things you already know. But if you're working with a team, it's best to know how you can best contribute. That means working with what you already know. If you know back-end DO back-end, if there are two of you working on the back-end, that would be a great time to try out peer programming. The point is this: don't say you're going to make the iOS version of your project when you've never even attempted a Swift tutorial.

2. Have a vision.
Nothing is worse than being awake, in full spirits, ready to work and not having anything to work on. Especially since your attention and focus will only wane when the hours get longer. You want to have an idea that you want to pursue. Really legit teams will have already drawn up a map (totally permissible) detailing how the app will function. A clearly conveyed idea will help you and your team get off on the right foot and will propel you when time gets slower and slower and slower. And trust me, it does.

3.  Be realistic.
It's easy to shoot for the moon, especially when there's, say, $10,000 on the line. Who wouldn't want to win some serious cash!? Most hackathons will give you some sort of criteria that you need to follow to qualify for the prizes. For eMerge all we needed to do was include a Visa API in. We started thinking of ideas that we would love to use in our daily lives and while all were great... it was just downright unrealistic to build out some of them when we had already spent more than an hour just thinking of an idea. Simplicity is your friend. Take a simple idea and bedazzle the shiz out of it. Make it really awesome. It isn't about the idea per say, it's about the execution of the idea.

4. Communication is key:
Waffleboards are your best friends. Keep an open dialogue with your teammates, let them know what you're working on, what you're having trouble with, what you've finished and going to work on next. Being on the same page with everyone will save you minutes which can add up in the end. And when you and the rest of your team are stumped on a specific problem, don't be afraid to reach out to other contestants-- most of the people there are more than happy to help (or humble brag but whatevs). We actually ended up coding with some other non-team members after they offered to help us out. Smart and friendly people rock.

And there you have it. This is certainly this is not a comprehensive guide, but a lil' something from me to you. I did forget to mention one thing: don't forget to have fun. That's what these things are all about, the small, local ones that is. ;)