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National-level Hackathon 🛠️🥇

How to win hackathon? How shajin won national-level hackathon been an school student competing with college students.

Shajin KP

20^th June 2021

What was hackathon about?

It was on topic : Health issues faced by society 🧬 in today's world.

Rules and regulations of the hackathon

1. Max 4 members in a team (I was alone)

2. 12 hours hackathon

3. Can use any software technology (I used Flutter + Python + Node)

4. No age limit (I was 17 years old)

5. No need to be an student, can be an employee or anyone

Highlights of me at hackathon

1. I was the only school student in the hackathon

2. I was the only one who was alone in the hackathon

3. I was youngest in the hackathon

4. I do't have any prior experience in hackathon (it was my first hackathon)

5. I was not good at public speaking or pitching my idea to judges

Do you need to have any prior experience by participating in hackathon?

No, I didn't have any prior experience in hackathon. I just had an idea and I implemented it planing plays and major rule.

What was my expectation before hackathon?

I was not even expecting to win the hackathon. I just wanted to participate and learn something new and network with people.

But I do spend a lots of time to plan and validate my idea and product

What was my idea?

My idea was to build an app that can track diseases and provide personalized health recommendations with live diseases spreading map and tracking

Potential of my idea

I can track and find the diseases spreading in my area and I can take precautions to prevent it or even I can get personalized health recommendations based on my health condition and diseases spreading in my area.

We are trying to fill gap in commutation of medical team and common person and sociality

What was my plan?

1. I planned to build an app that can track diseases and provide personalized health recommendations with live diseases spreading map and tracking in side an map

2. Giving dashboard and API for medical institutes and hospitals

3. Giving dashboard and API for government

4. Giving dashboard for Parasitical companies & small medical stores for understanding the demand of medicines and medical equipment

Yes, I was unable to implement all this within 12 hours. But I was able to implement the core idea and I was able to win the hackathon.

Do you really need public speaking skills to win hackathon?

May be, I don't know. But I was an normal person (OR kind of introvert) and I was not good at public speaking. But I was able to win the hackathon. but was able to express all my ideas and thoughts to the judges and audience. I was able to convince them with my idea and product.

Team work or individual work?

depends on the hackathon. Some hackathon allows team work and some hackathon allows individual work. In my case, I was alone and I was able to win the hackathon. But I would recommend to have a team. Because you can divide the work and you can build the product faster also meet your negatives with your team members positives.

Then why not I had a team? I was not able to find a partner, I BEGGED in many of participants to join me. But no one was ready to join me. So I was alone 😉.

Who are my competitors?

College students (B.Tech, BCA etc..)

I am not sure is there any employee or not, because this hackathon was in hybrid mode (online + offline) and I was not able to see all the participants in online mode.

Yes, I am the only school student in the hackathon. I was competing with college students. But I was able to win the hackathon.

Yes, I am youngest in the hackathon.

Images of hackathon and final product

Shajin at hackathon, pitching his idea to judges

Bonus tips

1. Use notion to plan your idea and product

2. Use figma to design your product

3. Create Todo - list and plan your work

4. Use github to manage your code

Get my notion page