When I first take a step into this tech world, I didn't know about hackathons. Out of the blue, I was informed about India's largest hackathon called Smart India hackathon. I was new in the college and I barely know my colleagues but still, I decide to participate in this hackathon. I searched through a problem statement and I have my idea but don't have a team. I got a team of seniors but they didn't match my interest level. we submitted anyhow the project idea. As of result, we selected at the college level. But rejected at finals. then after I tried to find a team and hackathon but didn't make it.
Lessons that I Learned-
Importance of team and teammates :
Hackathons are all about building together and upskilling together. A team plays a vital role in every aspect of the hackathon. Teammates with the same enthusiasm are necessary to win a hackathon. If they are not active, alert & interested participation can be tough.
Knowing the worth of yourself team:
If you are an introvert like me you can't let your teammates ignore your efforts. Every little individual effort of any teammate counts. What I did was I covered all the areas of work alone but didn't come up with a strong voice and in the end, other teammates messed up at the time presentation. So speak for yourself.
[ Well technically it was my first but In my eyesight, My real first hackathon was HackNITR 4.0 ]
Experience from HACKNITR 4.0 :
I am considering this hackathon to be the beginning of my development journey. The very first hackathon in which I and My team put our best efforts. We covered this hackathon till the end of the submission. Well, I learned from the past the importance of the team so this time I have to say HATS OFF TO MY TEAM!! We started to work on the project a week ago. That's where I learned the complete process of the building project. The importance of frontend and UI/UX, Backend, API integration, and Database.
Our Frontend team completed its UI a week ago. We are newbies in designing field so it was quite challenging for us. we are trying to create our 3d animation/avatar. We dig up a lot of tools like Spline, Blender, Illustrator, Svgator, and three.js. Ended up creating beautiful 2d avatars. All of them are beautiful & have expressions like mine. Talking about my Backend team now both of them are mastering PHP, as I said it's all about changing yourself. We are done with the front end then all of a sudden I got inspired by one of my designs, and thought of changing the whole UI last night. Guess what I did it and then the UI is much better than before, and all of them are really happy with my decision.
Now it's time for presentation and Q&A time during the time of submission of the project and I fell asleep at 4 am because the submission deadline is 9 am . I was woken up by a friend and made it anyhow.
Lessons that I Learned-
Be ready for any kind of sudden change in the project. We changed a whole frontend in last night.
Time management is important. Make sure that the division of tasks helps the team to manage time properly.
Try to work on that area of the project where you never worked before. This helps you learn new things and makes you move one step ahead.
The presentation video should be so clear that if people only looked into your video they have gotten your ideas properly. Keep it short and simple. Clarity should be shown not only in your video but also in your Explanation s as well.
Never forget that you are building a real-time project, Then websites, and apps should be more realistic. For that, I'll suggest going on some related websites/app and getting inspiration and building it.