48 hours of red bull, pizza, and straight grind.
HackPrinceton is Princeton’s yearly hackathon. It’s a 48-hour event where you can build anything with a team of 4 people. I went in with a group of 2 other guys, and we had a great time. To our surprise, we ended up winning the event, and I’m going to talk about what we did, and how we did it.
HackPrinceton is known for being one of those hackathons where you have to apply to compete. I had never done an in-person hackathon before and I was a little worried about whether I’d be able to compete against others. However, I swallowed my fear and applied. After waiting a couple weeks, I received an email in my inbox from the organizers and I was estatic… until I opened it up. Turns out, I was put on the waitlist. That’s like a short way of saying “You’re not in, but you’re not out”. That initially sucked.
There I was for a couple days, waiting on the list until I received the exciting email telling me I was moved off. Wooho, Princeton here I come! Not so fast, it turns out I was moved off the waitlist to the rejected pile. That was rather unfortunate, but I took it on the chin and moved on. Then, 15 minutes later, I received an email saying if I was able to provide my own accommodations, I would be accepted. I was ecstatic, and I immediately accepted the offer. After some turbulence, my journey finally began.
When I was first accepted, I realized there was one glaring issue that I did not think about. I didn’t have a team to work with. They say you can form your teams at the event in person, but for me, that seemed like a surefire way to go into the hackathon with no direction.
I spent the next couple of days trying to find a good set of people to work with and realized team building is a really, really hard skill. Bringing yourself to message random people, somehow evaluate both their skills and your compatibility with them, and then finally deciding to work with them is a really hard thing to do. Thankfully, I was able to find a team of like-minded individuals with a thrive for learning and building. They also had nice portfolio sites, which was a bonus and a huge bias point for me. I like seeing people take initiative to put themselves out there in a concise manner that helps me get a grasp of their skills really fast. And with that, I was ready to start brainstorming.
I thought the hard part was going to be finding a team, but thinking up an idea to pursue with the team proved to be even harder. We had a couple ideas, but none of them really stuck. Then, as I was sitting with some of my friends in the university library, helping them learn some class concepts that they were confused about when I had an idea. From my time at one of my previous companies, I learned that students are in dire need of help. Whether it be at the high school or college level, existing resources are lackluster around the country. But there are always some bright students in a class that are willing to help others, with a little monetary motivation. I thought, what if we could create a platform where students could provide support to other students in the form of interactive live streams, QnA sessions, practice questions, and more. Thus, the idea for EduLive was born.
Once we had a solid idea, the hackathon became more of a grind of how fast could we complete the core of our idea so we could put a bunch of nice bells and whistles. Without going into too much detail about our implementation, we were able to get a working prototype of our idea with full livestreaming and chat capabilities up and running in about 32 hours. The rest of the time was spent polishing, deploying, and doing other tasks that made our project look nice.
I didn’t go in expecting to win, seeing as it was my first hackathon and I wasn’t as accustomed as some of the other teams were. But on the final day, I was pleasantly surprised when it was announced that we had won the education track. I was amazed, there were other projects that I thought were set to beat me, so seeing my name on that screen was amazing.
As for EduLive now, now we’re pursuing it as a startup and looking to turn it into a fully-fledged platform capable of satiating students’ needs! If you’re someone who thinks they’re interested in something like this, contact me
If you’re reading this, and you’re thinking about going to a hackathon, I highly recommend it. It’s a great way to meet new people, learn new skills, and build something cool. I didn’t know my team less than a week before the hackathon, and now I’m extremely close with them. When you’re looking for a team, find people who share your ideals, beliefs, and desire to do good.
Also, freshen up your skills before the competition, as time is of the essence during the hacking period and you mustn’t waste time going over the basics.
Finally, don’t reinvent the wheel. If someone has released a package out there like a component library or utility that does the heavy lifting for you, use it. Don’t waste time setting up a repo during the competition if there’s an existing template out there that fits your need and will cut the amount of time you’re spending getting set up down in half.
Thanks for reading this article! Check me out on GitHub!