Make-a-thon? Did the question arise, “Is it like Hackathon?” Yeah well, that’s what we thought too. Turns out we were partially wrong about it. So then what did we do? That’s what I’m gonna talk about.
Let me start from the beginning. I came to know about the Make-a-thon, powered by Microsoft, from my friends and we decided to give it a try. First, we formed a group of four and chose our team name as “Q-riosity”, as in curiosity, get it? And yeah we went ahead with it and entered our second step: Choose a problem statement and work on it. That we did within a night and submitted it on the next day after getting it reviewed from our seniors. And then the long wait for the result. But it didn’t turn out to be long as it was announced the next day annndddd… Voilaaa! We were selected! Apart from us, two other teams from amFOSS were selected. We decided to travel together. So there you go, this was gonna be my first hackathon that too in the city of Bangalore. Everything was set. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, the twelve of us started our journey on 28th June, Friday evening via train. It was an enjoyable journey on the whole, with the twelve of us having fun. Food, jokes and friends make a long journey of 14 hours seem just a few hours long 😉
Well, we reached Bangalore the next day and got to the place, where the Makeathon was to be conducted. Where is that? It was in the freaking Microsoft Office itself! I couldn’t control myself. We were actually in the office itself and it was my very first hackathon. It was a great day to begin the hackathon and soon the magical moment came. We realised with excitement that we were the only, “only girls team” and that our three teams were the only student teams, rest all were professional ones. We were ready and hiked up for the challenge. We were briefed with our problem statement and then were told the two magical words: “Get Hacking!” And we did.
Now, the hackathon was to be marked with two checkpoints, one at 7.00pm and another at 2.00am! The first went smoothly enough with the only comment being made about the lack of mockups in our presentation. We made those and got ready for the next checkpoint. In between, we were provided with the greatest pleasure of meeting with honorable and distinguished guests from Microsoft itself. It was indeed a proud moment for us being acknowledged by such great men and women.
Then where did it go wrong? Actually not much. The main theme of the Makeathon was to marketize their product but we focused more on the technical part of the product. Well, after all, we are CS students. So that was a bit of a setback for us when we came to know during the second checkpoint that our presentations had to include the marketing aspect as well. We were unprepared for this change in field of knowledge and thus, succumbed to the pressure in the last five hours. We worked hard and took very less rest (except for a small trip outside the building within the premises in the freezing cold, that did not last long at all 😉 ) and tried to include all the points we researched about. But Alas! We did not make it. We weren’t selected for the final round. Here, are some more pics showing us hard at work 😛
Though we did not get selected, it was indeed an amazing experience for me. Being my first hackathon, not only did it teach me to improve my presentation skills but also to work within a deadline and about teamwork and strategy planning with my teammates. All-in-all, it was a truly enlighting trip for me.
Thanks to all my friends: @Swathi_Kasikala, @Hridya_Krishna, @Shivangi_Singh, @Yash_Khare, @Vaishnav_Sivaprasad, @Vishwaak_Chandran, @Veerasamy_Sevagen, @Ashwin_Shenoy, @Harshith_Pabbati, @Puneeth_Chanda and @Abhijit_Ramesh for all the fun and support, guys! amFOSS Rockzz!!!
MagicalMe 