Yesterday (5/10), I had the incredible opportunity to participate in the IIT Delhi Hackathon- an event that brought together some of the brightest minds in the tech world. It was a whirlwind of innovation and collaboration, and I can't wait to share my experience with you.

It all started when my friend told me that an annual fest was being organized in IIT Delhi and there was also a hackathon in which some of his friends were participating, so I thought that I should participate.

Teaming Up

One of the first challenges was finding the perfect team. I called my school friend and he agreed to participate and the third person was his college friend. In no time, I was surrounded by like-minded individuals, each bringing a unique set of skills to the table.

The Ideation Phase

With our team in place, we dived into the ideation phase. We brainstormed, scribbled on whiteboards, and even argued a bit (all in good fun, of course). But eventually, we settled on an idea that had the potential to disrupt an entire industry. It was exhilarating to see our vision taking shape as we were building a code collaborator to enhance the teaching experience for both teacher and student. We made brief PPT of our idea and made short videos of our. The submission was till about 12 o'clock in the night and the link in which we inserted the PPT and video was not working but we corrected it and Submitted it at 12:05 am and it's accepted.

First Round

I had forgotten about this after giving PPT but 2 days before the event I got an email that our team had been selected. Then I told my teammates and they also forgot about it.

The first round was an elimination round and more than 200 teams participated out of which only 30 teams were selected and our team was one of them.

Coding

IIT Delhi is 50 Km away from my college so I left my hostel at 6 am in the morning and went to Hauz Khas metro station where I met my teammates and then head towards the Lecture Hall. Introduction took place after going to the lecture hall and then timer started and everyone started coding.

First Evaluation ( Pre Lunch )

First evaluation round took place before lunch and a team from Adobe was there for evaluation and they checked the progress of everyone's project and motivated those who were facing problems. By then we had created the frontend of our home page and after looking at everyone's project, we realized that we were lagging behind. So I decided to have lunch first and I was feeling sleepy because I had not slept the night before.

I took lunch and went to the 6th floor from where I had a good view. After having lunch, we went out because the annual fest was also going on, so we had some refreshment.There were teams which comes from different colleges, some were performing street plays, some were dancing and some were singing songs and events were also taking place and after all this we all went back to Lecture Hall as other teams still coding. we motivated and start our project back.

Second Evaluation ( Post Lunch )

Second evaluation took place 2 hours before final submission and this time we had to explain our project to evaluator. All evaluator were very nice to us and at every point they motivated us. This time they advise us to complete it as soon as possible because we just build frontend and Api part.

Now we got up to speed and coded straight forward for 2 hours and somehow built basic functionality. Now it's 5 o'clock and evaluation has started to go to the next round. So we had to make a video explaining the product and share it by uploading the code on GitHub. After doing all this, we went out and saw many events happening outside and started waiting for the results.

Final Evaluation

When the results came, our team's name was not there, they had selected only 8 teams. After getting rejected, we wandered around the campus for a bit. My mood was a little bad, so we came out of the campus and then went to Pushp Vihar to eat my favourite momos. Our team didn't win but learned a lot from the Hackathon and also made friends there.

And then I slept as soon as I came home because I had to go to college the next day.