🏆 What do you think about hackathons?

Hi guys 🙂
Have you ever been on a hackathon?
What do you think about this type of event?
What was the biggest value of an event for you?

Please, share your experience with me on Twitter. I will select the best answers and put them in my article. 😉

Reasons why I love hackathons:

Building something new

I think hackathons are a great opportunity to create a new project from scratch. You know what I’m talking about if you are a maker too. It’s the feeling of building something. When you see how the project is shaping under your hands. It’s awesome. In hackathons, you compose a team with a mix of people, developers, designers, business people, etc. You are combining your skills in order to build an excellent product.

Meeting like-minded people

Hackathons attract similar people with similar interests and similar mindsets. That’s why it works so well. It’s highly probable you match with others and create a perfect team. It means you don’t need to know people from your team before attending a hackathon. Talking to like-minded people is more natural for everybody so networking is great even for introverts.

You meet new makers. You chat with them, have fun and a bond may be created. You are one team during the event but it doesn’t mean your friendship has to end there. I’m happy I was able to find new friends and colleagues there.

You can find a new business partner or mentor too. Events like that attract many investors and business people. You can make the first contact with them there and ask for advice or help later. Your LinkedIn profile should gain a few more connections for sure.

New project ideas

It’s an event with very skilled and smart people in one place. It happens from time to time that they come up with an extraordinary product.

It’s a great event for validating your ideas. You can create an MVP and validate it during the weekend. You share your ideas with others and pitch the project in front of the audience and judges in the end. You will receive a ton of feedback you can work with later. My friend actually made the foundations of his product on the idea from the hackathon we won.

Competition

One of the things that keep you going on 200% during the whole event is competitiveness. It’s a strange mix of fun combined with stress. You want to create the best product and win. The prizes are not that bad too. You can find hackathons where you can win a lot of money or some very cool gadgets. For example, we won an XBOX that is the main entertainment tool in our offices.

I can tell you it’s a good feeling when you are able to create something in that short period of time and people appreciate it. On top of that, you beat other very smart and intelligent people in the room. Love it.

BTW, I have won 3 hackathons 🧐
If you want to find out some advice on how to do that, check the full article