This Is My First Hackathon, How Should I Prepare? (Tips & Hackathon Questions Inside)

A hackathon is certainly not a tool to truly judge your abilities, however, emerging as a winner can boost your confidence. A hackathon is a fun way of generating new ideas that can be of use for the larger good, and this can make you feel no less than a hero!

Many of you would be participating in a hackathon for the first time. Questions like how should I prepare, what sort of hackathon problem statement will be given, etc. might leave you in a dilemma. We will address these queries in the article below.

Stay glued to read the most important hackathon problem statements or hackathon questions.

Tips to prepare for your first hackathon

1. Be sure of the goal

There are quite a number of good approaches to utilizing a hackathon. Maybe you want to execute your dream project, maybe to judge your programming capabilities, or you want to simply participate in a hackathon that can help you convey any of these objectives. Crystalizing your objectives a long time before the hackathon starts will help characterize your prep procedure, and help you deal with your opportunity when you're there.

Since hackathons are time-bound, hoping to create a useful item with many complex features and functionalities will be unrealistic and over-the-top pressure will obstruct execution. It would be better to focus on a product that functions admirably without glitches and may win you accolades.

2. Your team can be the secret recipe for your success

Picking each team member intelligently is the primary process before participating in the hackathon. If even one of the team members has a slack disposition it can be an impediment to success. Choose each member who is equally passionate about the drive and shares a common goal. Attempt to get individuals with various abilities, both tech, and non-tech who can handle pressure and certainly remain calm in those circumstances. Any loss in morale can affect the final outcome.

3. Choose your theme

While most hackathon projects are close-ended, some of them are open-ended too, you need to be wise to choose a hackathon theme that you are fairly good at. Hackathons are conducted to derive a game-changing or mind-blowing idea that had not been conceptualized before. If you are treading an unknown territory, you might not be well aware of the pros and cons, however, never let your adventurous spirit die, it can always be a new experience.

4. Research and draw Inspiration

Creativity won’t outflow unless you are deeply enamored by an idea or obsessed about bringing about a change. Frequent libraries and gathering requisite information from different sources. Try not to invest excessive energy in composing code for functionalities that can be actualized utilizing open-source libraries and frameworks. Simply center around actualizing the central theme that you are working on.

A thorough understanding of the strategies that different programmers utilized at past hackathons can be favorable. Their experiences, successes, and failures will help in thinking of a decent plan of action or blueprint.

5. Use Source Control tool

Simply envision, you are into a long procedure of building your item, and hours after you recognize a glitch and don't know where you committed an error. There certainly isn't sufficient time to experience heaps of code to detect the error. Consequently, it's advisable to utilize a source control framework like git that can help in monitoring each change and distinguish the change that caused the error.

6. Use quick deployment solutions

The central idea of hackathon projects is to assemble a working model of your thought. Try not to invest excessive energy in facilitating the application. Make sense of how you can rapidly deploy applications on cloud-facilitating arrangements like AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud. You can likewise utilize PaaS arrangements like Heroku, Openshift, or IBM Bluemix can be utilized for sending and facilitating: We are not questioning your abilities at being a superior system administrator, however, in the given time restrict, utilizing a simple organization arrangement will assist the group with concentrating on coding, building, arrangement, and testing.

7. Presentation is crucial

It is wise to spare some time to prepare for the presentation because everything that you have done in the hackathon depends on how correctly you can demonstrate your hack. Make sure that you cover all aspects of the hack including important points like – the problem being solved by the hack, the scope that the current hack covers, why it is different from existing solutions, and work that can be done in the future.

8. Socialize

Hackathons are not just about competition but also about networking, meeting interesting people, and making some friends. Make sure competition does not come in the way of having fun. Winning is not the only thing that you can take away from a hackathon.

9. Do not starve

Do not get so engrossed in the process that you forget your snack time. Balance your timing in such a way that you don’t go extreme on either front. In this way, you can ensure your success.

Hackathon questions/Hackathon problem statements

If you want to practice an unending bank of hackathon coding questions and answers, hop on to this platform. Why?

You can select the difficulty level of the hackathon coding questions you want to tackle, ranging from easy to medium to difficult.
There is also the option to select the topics of the hackathon questions like arrays, subsets, data structure & algorithms, hashtables, etc.
You can also choose hackathon examples from companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Samsung to gain insight into the challenges/coding competitions that these companies hold.
The platform also includes a leaderboard feature that allows you to compare your performance to that of other participants.
Another interesting feature is the badges section, which certifies the level of coding skills!

Make this a journey of learning with fun. Hackathons if used in the correct way can help you upgrade your programming skills in an exponential way. Are you prepared for the next hackathon?

Suggested reads: