You can’t sleep coding: how to assemble a team and prepare for a hackathon?

I organized hackathons in Python, Java, .Net, each of which was visited from 100 to 250 people. As an organizer, I watched the participants from the side and made sure that the hackathon is not only about technology, but also about competent training, well-coordinated work and communication. In this article, I have collected the most common mistakes and non-obvious life hacks that will help novice hackers prepare for the upcoming season.

Build a dream team

Yes, there are loners at hackathons, but I don’t remember a single case when they managed to win prizes. Why? Four people in 48 hours have time to do four times more work than one. The question arises - how should an effective team be staffed? If you have friends in whom you are confident and together went through fire and water - then everything is clear. What if I want to participate, but there is no complete team?

In general, there may be two scenarios:

• You are so active that you are ready to find and rally the people around you yourself, becoming the leader and captain of the team
• You do not want to bother and are ready to become part of a team that is looking for a person with your profile.

In any case, you need to go through the following steps:

1. Analyze the information that is about the task.
   
   
   
   The organizers intentionally do not always give complete information about the task, so that the teams do not cheat and do not prepare decisions in advance. But almost always even a small introductory is enough to evaluate your current set of knowledge.
   
   
   
   For example, the task says that it will be necessary to develop a prototype mobile application. And you only have experience with WEB development and design, but it’s bad with backing, database integration and testing. So, it is precisely this knowledge and skills that you need to look for in your potential teammates.
2. Look for teammates among friends, acquaintances and colleagues.
   
   
   
   If in your circle of friends there are those who have already won hackathons, freelancing or working in the field related to the topic of the assignment, then these guys should be called to the hackathon first of all.
3. Tell the world about yourself.
   
   
   
   If the second point was not enough, then feel free to throw a cry in the social network. Try to be concise and as simple as possible:
   
   
   
   "Hello! I’m looking for teammates at Hackathon N. We need two ambitious and charged people to win - an analyst and a frontend. There are already two of us:
   
   
   
   
   1. Egor - fullstack developer, winner of the hackathon X;
   2. Anya is a Ux / Ui designer, I work on outsourcing and make web + mobile solutions for clients.
   
   
   "Write in PM, we need two more heroes in our fantastic four."
   
   
   
   You can safely copy the text, replace the names and stacks xD
4. Start looking for a team
   
   
   
   
   • Publish a post with an appeal to your social networks (fb, vk, on your blog, if you lead)
   • Use chats of old hackathons where you have already participated
   • Write in the group of participants of the upcoming hackathon (often the organizers create them in advance)
   • Look for groups or events of events (official meetings of the event in vk \ fb)
   
   
   

Get ready for the hackathon

The finished team is half the victory. The second half is a quality preparation for the hackathon. Usually, participants think about preparation before going to the hackathon. But some steps taken in advance can make life easier. It is important to remember that at the event venue you can spend up to 48 hours, which means you need not only not to be distracted from focused work, but also to organize a comfortable environment for yourself. How to do it?

What to bring with you:

• Favorite pillow, plaid or sleeping bag for the most avid hackers - just a must have attribute
• Passport and medical policy
• Toothbrush and toothpaste
• Wet wipes
• Find out if the organizers have a shower on the court (if so, take a towel)
• Change clothes with you
• Replaceable shoes (comfortable sneakers \ sneakers \ slippers)
• Umbrella
• Painkillers
• Nout + charging + extension cord
• Powerbank for the phone
• Adapters, flash drives, hard drives

Make sure that all the paid software on your PC is paid for, the necessary libraries are loaded.

How to plan team work

• Decide how you will make decisions in contentious situations. It’s best to just vote with your hands and make a common team decision.
• Think about who will monitor the dynamics of your work, facilitate and plan the work of the team, manage communication in the team. Typically, this role in agile commands is performed by a scrum master who monitors the scrum process. If you are not familiar with this role, be sure to google it.
• Set timers every 3-4 hours to keep track of the overall progress of time. Determine for yourself the internal checkpoints when you check the clock: what time and what should be ready for you to have time to do everything at the last minute.
• It is a mistake to believe that a sleepless night with the whole team will lead you to victory. The longer the hackathon, the more important the dream. Anyway, evening and night are usually the most memorable moments in the hackathons: all the funniest and noisiest happens then. Do not dwell on the code, give yourself the opportunity to relax.
• Organizers often put on Sony Play Station or XBox, include films, do quests and other parallel activities to create a comfortable emotional atmosphere. Use these benefits so that your brain does not boil.
• Remember the Paretto rule: 20% of the effort should give you 80% of the result. Think about how much effort you will spend on a particular decision and what effect you can get. Team time is limited, knowledge is also limited, which means that resources must be allocated efficiently.

Performance and evaluation of your decision

What to consider before the performance?

• Study the evaluation criteria in advance, write them down and keep them in your mind during the decision. Check with them constantly.
• Examine the judges profile and occupation, background. Perhaps articles on the hub or blog posts, on the official pages of companies. Think about what expectations they might have when evaluating. For judges with strong technical experience, it is important to do a code review of your decisions, and an experienced designer will look at the user experience and features. The thought seems commonplace, but for some reason they forget about it.
• Do not forget about the power of networking. Your team actually does not consist of 4 people, you are much more, you have colleagues and friends. You can use any open legal sources and your contacts that you can find. If this helps your decision!
• It will be valuable to talk about the logic of the solution and the data sources during the pitch. If you find a non-standard way to test a hypothesis, then tell us about it. This will add value to your decision.
  
  
  
  For example, a representative of Central Asia was among your friends and you were able to conduct a smoke test with him. Or they found interesting analytics and reviews that helped shorten your work time.
  
  
• No one ever forbade teams to communicate with each other and test ideas. By the end of the hackathon, nobody will steal your idea, which means that some hypotheses can be tested directly on the neighbors.
• There are always consultants and experts at the hackathons who are there to help you and share your experience. You can not take their comments into the work, but getting feedback and a chance at the current decision from the side is an important step towards victory.
• Think of a presentation template in advance. Make a slide with the profile and information about the team: your photos, contacts, information about education or current work experience. You can add links to github or your portfolio if you want the jury to be able to get to know you better.
• If you plan a task on prototyping and interfaces - pay for marvel or other services in advance so as not to worry about it during the hackathon.
• When you have an understanding of the final decision, then take the time to prepare for the presentation - try to drive it out several times, take the time for the structure and the following additional recommendations.

What to remember during the performance?

• No need to repeat the task and waste precious time of the presentation, it is known to all the judges and participants.
• At the very beginning, tell us about the key decision and approach that you have taken. This is a cool life hack used in business appearances. So you will immediately receive 100% of the audience’s attention, their interest. And then it will be necessary to tell structurally how you came to this decision, what logic was, hypotheses, how you tested and selected, what patterns you found and how you can use your decision.
• If a prototype was intended, show and tell. Think about the \ qr-code link in advance so that viewers can access it.
• Think about how financially your decision can come about. How much money will it save the customer? How to reduce time to market, NPS client, etc.? It is important to show that you have not only a good technical solution, but also economically feasible. This is the very business value.
• Do not go too deep into the technical component. If the judges have questions about the code, algorithms and models, they themselves will ask. If you think some kind of info is very important - add it to a special slide and hide it at the end in case of questions. If the judges do not have questions, initiate a dialogue yourself and tell us what else remains behind the scenes of your presentation.
• A good performance is where each member of the team spoke and said the word. Ideally, if everyone lights up that scope of the tasks that they did.
• Live performances, seasoned with a good sense of humor, are always better than ideally rehearsed monologues from the stage :)

Life hacks about nutrition

A few life hacks about nutrition, because it really affects your well-being, mood and energy. There are two main rules:

• Protein saturates, gives a feeling of satiety. This is fish, bird, cottage cheese.
• Carbohydrates provide energy. Fast carbohydrates - a quick release of energy and a sharp decline in it, it appears to sleep after pasta, potatoes, meatballs, chips and so on. And complex carbohydrates (buckwheat, oatmeal, bulgur) are slowly absorbed and gradually saturate you with energy. Like a battery, they will feed you.

Therefore, if you want to be in an excellent mood for the time of the hackathon, forget about harmful snacks, cola, sneakers and chocolate. A hearty breakfast with cereal in the morning, cereals / cereals for lunch and protein, and in the evening - vegetables and protein. The best drink is water, and instead of coffee, it is better to drink tea - it has more caffeine and it will certainly invigorate the body and spirit.



Well that's all. Hope that was helpful!



By the way, in September we hold a Raiffeisenbank hackathon for java developers (and not only).



All details and application submission here.



Come, get acquainted in person;)