What are hackathons, how to prepare for them, and how to win them?

Contents:

• What is a hackathon
• Types of hackathons
• Why hackathons are needed: fun and money
• How to prepare for a hackathon: advice from Alexander Sidorenko
• Where to look for hackathons

You will learn:

• What is a hackathon;
• What are they?
• Why are they needed?
• How to prepare for a hackathon;
• Schedule of current hackathons.

What is a hackathon?

Hackathon — It's an event where programmers, designers, and managers collaborate to solve a problem in a limited time, competing against each other. The word "hackathon" comes from "hacker" and "marathon." The first hackathon was held in 1999 by OpenBSD and Sun Microsystems developers. The rest is history!
Usually, the goal of a hackathon is to create a full-fledged version of a program or service for a company. Each hackathon focuses on a specific area of ​​knowledge—a programming language, an operating system, specific types of applications, or an application programming interface (API).
Most often, hackathons involve creating a working prototype of a program or service for a company. Each event focuses on a specific area of ​​expertise—a programming language, operating system, specific application types, or application programming interface (API).
For example, at Avito's ML hackathon, participants were tasked with developing an AI model that could recommend the most relevant ads to users. Each participant was provided with a set of anonymized data on user interactions with ads. The model that best predicted click probability won the hackathon.

What types of hackathons are there?

Hackathons are held not only for programmers, but also for designers and managers. Prizes also vary: a large sum of money, help with project development, an offer to a company, benefits when entering a university, or simply a plus in karma (charity hackathons).
As a rule, hackathons have either educational or commercial goals. Moreover, in Russia, hackathons are more often commercial: a company wants to solve a technological problem or hire developers en masse."
Alexander Sidorenko, experienced hackathon participant and JS developer
An example of a commercial hackathon is the ARCHI.Tech project from VTB. The winners received cash prizes and job offers at the company - apparently, this was an attempt to hunt talented architects.
"In my opinion, there is a division by type of organizer. For example, hackathons run by commercial companies aim to promote their HR brand and recruit developers, while communities often hold hackathons simply to do something cool."
Mikhail Korneev, Team Lead at BestDoctor, author of the YouTube channel "Sly Python"
Educational hackathons are rare in Belarus. And they usually have either no prize fund at all or a purely symbolic one. Hackathons run by enthusiasts also don't have much money, although people don't participate in them just to make money.

Why hackathons: fun and money

There are three main reasons to participate in a hackathon:

• Passion. Drives those in love with code.
• Money. Drives everyone 🙂
• A line on a resume. Drives those who lack experience.

“I participated in hackathons because I wanted to spend time with my developer friends writing code under time constraints. It adds zest to the event. And to be honest, in two years of work, I have never had a single rush job that could compare in tension and excitement to a hackathon. I only went to a hackathon once specifically for the money – but that doesn’t mean there is no money in hackathons. "I just have different goals."
Alexander Sidorenko, experienced hackathon participant and JS developer
Winning a hackathon is a great resume item when applying for a job at a company:
"I don't even remember the exact number of hackathons I participated in. Something like a dozen. Most of them were fun for me. But ultimately, the hackathon projects strengthened my portfolio, and large companies invited me to work, and the university paid a scholarship. That's how I found my first job - right away in a corporation and for dollars. And in my second year, I won a prize of 50,000 Russian rubles at a hackathon."
Alexander Sidorenko, experienced hackathon participant and JS developer
From a career perspective, hackathons are especially interesting for beginners. Projects done at hackathons help break the vicious circle of not getting hired by a company because you don't have a portfolio, and not having a portfolio means you don't get hired.
"I usually recommend hackathons to beginners in my courses. This is a great experience, an opportunity to meet new people and show yourself to HR."
Mikhail Korneev, Team Lead at BestDoctor, author of the YouTube channel "Sly Python"

How to prepare for a hackathon: advice from Alexander Sidorenko

A JavaScript developer and regular participant in web programming hackathons told how he prepared for his first developer battle.
To work on projects, I gathered guys with shining eyes - and I believe that this is the best selection method. Moreover, I assembled the team in my first year. Now its original composition has changed a lot - of those who started with us, only four people remain, including me. But in fact, there are more guys - some people are just "in reserve" for now.
I don’t think any specific training is needed. The main thing is that the roles in the team are properly distributed. One person might throw together a bunch of ideas and program a mobile app, another might design ideas and slides, research the market and competitors, and prepare a speech for the most charismatic participant, while the remaining roles might be purely technical. And that doesn't mean technical people aren't important—technical people will sell the solution to the technical people on the jury, and those who create the visuals and sales will sell the idea to everyone else.
I usually lay out a number of killer features and basic functionality for my role in advance. I create autodeployment for the front and back end, a simple CRUDE, deploy the database, and some other basic stuff that's too much to spend time on during the event itself. Otherwise, I try to maintain a competitive atmosphere and don't write the app in advance. It's also a good idea to get a good night's sleep, as even during the hackathons we managed to get an average of 2-4 hours of sleep per night.
Don't forget about the presentation, design, and economics of your product. We weren't able to win many hackathons until we started focusing on this.

Where to look for hackathons

There are several resources on the Internet that publish information about upcoming hackathons:

• Hackathon.com is a website where you can find out about upcoming hackathons anywhere in the world. Here we publish information about hackathons from IBM, Google, NASA and other major companies.
• Digital Breakthrough is a platform for organizing hackathons with sponsorship and government support.
• Codenrock is an up-to-date calendar and platform for hackathons, ML competitions and programming competitions.
• Habr is a popular resource about IT and development, where you can also often find announcements of hackathons and selections of similar events.
• Devpost is a platform where you can find information about foreign hackathons.

We recommend checking these resources periodically to avoid missing new events and stay informed about upcoming hackathons.