Hackabit19 : One of a kind experience
So, its the month of October and we have reached the middle of academic session of 3rd year, bored AF.
Moving to the flashback, from nowhere, a mail from BIT-Mesra dropped in my mailbox that they are conducting a pan India student hackathon named Hack-A-Bit and I summoned a meeting with the trio noobmaster69(avengers fans will get itXD) and decided to experience our first ever hackathon. This was a tough decision as we the hackathon was commencing on 18th of October, the same date for ICPC online round, and the same date, we were reaching Mesra from Gwalior, so we were well prepared that any one of the two experiences will be a bitter one.
The ideation phase
It was an open innovation hackathon, so we can choose any topic of our choice and the problem began right here! We choosed an idea, and in the next minute, one or the other will break it with some testcase, or we came to know that the idea already exists and its pointless to hack on a preprocessed idea.
We left all hopes of the hackathon, just when Vaibhav came up with a great idea of an automated queue management system with IoT, and the idea was polished to make it bulletproof.
Assigning the roles
We needed a strong hardware and IoT setup to make things easy for customers. Vaibhav aka “the hardwware guy” took upon the role. We also needed a web interface to relicate bill desk, which was built by Ashish(the “react” person), and I was left with the mobile development part.
Dooms's day
We reached Mesra by 9:00 in the morning, checked in to the hostels, and registered ourselves for the hackathon.
Coming back to the hackathon, it was 10:00PM, and the hackathon commenced successfully, and we began with our coding. At around 2AM, we understood that coffee was the only thing which can help us to stay awake.
The best part of the hackathon was its goodies, freebies and stickers, and this particular thing motivates me for participating hackathons the most.
It was 20th of October and the hacking phase was over and we had presented our hack, which was not so good on, as we messed up with our systems. Fingers crossed, we waited in the auditorium for the results, and finally narrowed ourselves to the 7th position🎉🎉.
Signing off, I would like to say that every one should participate in hackathons as its a hub of great developers and coders and a platform to exchange ideas, learn from the mentors and helps to enrich one's knowledge.