Winning MIT Covid-19 Hackathon.

Imagine a situation with limited internet connection and blinking power supply in a remote village of west champaran , Bihar,India and winning a hackathon organised 8,242 km(air travel distance) away at Masachhuets institute of technology consisting of 2350+ applications , 1500 participants from 100+ countries , 200 mentors ,70+ partners and 44 african countries out there. Sounds thrilling and exciting . Right? So it was.

SO IT ALL STARTED LIKE THIS,

I was reading some blog on google which was telling about various hackathons being organised in different parts of the world when i came across MIT Covid-19 virtual hackathon and then i got the link for aplying on Linkedin. I applied to it in by adding my idea and my three preferred tracks(problem statements) to solve. And on 1st May morning i received a mail mentioning my confirmation for participation alongwith other details and i was allotted Track:J Combating Misinformation.

The 48 hour rigurous Hackathon was to be started on 1st May,2020(10:00 am IST) to 3rd May, 2020( 2pm IST).

At 10:00 am on 1st may we got introduced to a zoom webinar which introduced us about the procedures of the event , our mentors , track leads , selection critetia and mentorship for the whole event.

After the webinar , a 45 seconds pitch of your idea was to be delivered via zoom conferencing to our track leads on the basis of which the virtual teams had to be formed.

So we had to listen ideas of all the 1500 participants to find the best match to our idea and requirement of skills. After this pitching session ended up , we were allotted some slack channels in which we had to mix and form teams. So, we formed a team of six members comprising two from India , two from USA,one from France and one from Texas. So basically , it was a fully-diverse team from all over the globe having three different time zones.

After we were done with team formation we started discussion and exchange of ideas using different virtual office tools.

DAY 1

Day 1 of the Hackathon was all about exchange of ideas, planning of execution on collaborative tools,identifying everyone’s skills for execution and value proposition. And in between the discussion one of our team members came up with the concept of building Most Lovable Product(MLP) instead of most viable product and proceeding with this we finalised the name of our team — MLP Rocket.

PRO-POINTS:

1. Understand the psychology of judges and understand calmly what they are expecting from participants.
2. Do some research about the background of judges.
3. Keep in mind the real agenda of Hackathon organisers throughout the event.
4. Know about the selection criteria, and match your idea to fulfill all your aspects.
5. Know about 5W’s for your idea — What , Where , When , Why , Who. This will make your idea eligible for most of the questions of idea feasibility.

DAY 2

Three sleepless nights and restless days were the part of the preparation as we were a whole diverse timezone team. and it was indeed way more hectic than real hackathons. The scene was like sitting on laptop and phones for three continuous days and nights was something worth loosing courage but it was hell exciting and thrilling experience at the same time because it was an all new experience to collaborate with international people on cloud and learn a bundle of new things while working.

So, on the second day of this event , our team divided into two parts namely — Demo team which was working on prototype(i was in it)and execution and Pitch team which was preparing pitch deck for the 3 minutes pitch on final day.

And with the co-operation of both the teams we were able to prepare a super prototype and a pitch deck.

And then our work was to improve our work as much as possible to make it the best.

DAY 3

And now it was the final day, pressure was on it’s peak. We were trying to be get it done as soon as possible. After we completed our materials, our team started practicing pitches for making it best out in the three minutes. Pitching, suggestions , comments , improvement it all was going and believe me it was really enjoyable which we realised after the event because we were in pressure back then.

We had a pitch practice in front of mentors for suggestions and improvement which went well with some positive changes which made our pitch and idea better.

And we discussed and improved our pitches and practised it again .

And the pitch session was to start in which each team was allotted 3 minutes to pitch their ideas on zoom calls and 2 minutes for feedback and questions.

We got the link to join the zoom call for pitching.

Teams started pitching , we were all waiting eagerly for our team name to be displayed on the screen while listening to other teams pitches and discussing with our team in background in our groups. It was really fun.

And the moment came when MLP Rocket was displayed on the screen and our name was announced for pitching.

And our team pitched it really well and we were satisfied that’s what we need at the end of the day nevertheless of victory or loosing if we are satisfied with our work then we think yes, the labour paid off.

And after all the teams were done with their pitchings we were given a short break after which our results were to be announced.

After few minutes, we got the link for joining zoom calls and get to know our results.We were from Track J before which results of tracks A to I(9 tracks) were announced and it was turn for track J . Our heart beat was skipping, fingers crossed, positively visualising MLP Rocket❤ on the screen and in transition of few seconds “WOHHHOOO❤” MLP Rocket ❤was on the screen at exact 1:12 pm and we won . It was a moment of hell excitement and we were like so happy at that moment . It was really a magical moment.

Our project:

High Fidelty design prototype of Accuro.

CONCLUSION:

So it was an amzingly managed event by MIT which realised everyone technology as a boon to collaborate and use our available resources to build something revolutionary.

At last i will be listing out some points which you should be expecting yourself taking out as output from a Hackathon whenever you participate(concluding all the hackathons at different levels till date):

1. Always have a mentality of learning new things when you participate in a hackathon.
2. Focus on actually building a project that have some USP which will make you stand-out from other participants.
3. Try to build good connections and try to learn something from everyone outthere.
4. Look for satisfaction for what you and your team did that is what matters at the end of the day.

Happy Hacking❤Further!