5 Excellent Hackathon Examples for Your Reference
In Hackathon, participants discuss ideas and form teams based on interests and specific skills, and some participants already have a clear definition of the project. Then the main event and teamwork begins, which lasts from 24 hours to several days. As a rule, no one leaves the hackathon from start to finish. Teams work continuously and spend a minimum amount of time sleeping and eating. After the work is done, the teams present their product. A jury is always invited to hackathons, who evaluate projects and choose the winners.
If you are new to the concept of hackathons, you may not know where to start given that there are so many examples of hackathon projects to choose from. To solve your confusion, we've compiled a list of hackathon examples that you should refer to if you are planning to organize a hackathon. Inspire your next hackathon with these 5 creative hackathons examples.
- Part 1: What is a hackathon and why does your business need it?
- Part 2: 5 great hackathon examples
- Part 3: Tools you can use in Hackathon
What is a hackathon and why hackathons are good?
The hackathon is a team competition for developers where participants gather in teams of 3-5 people to create an app or hardware project without sleep over the weekend, and event sponsors provide them with coffee, food, and a place to work and play. Hackathons periodically give birth to extremely successful projects: created in 2010 as part of one of the TechCrunch hackathons, the GroupMe application was sold to Skype for $ 85 million.
What does a hackathon usually consist of?
- Registration of participants and the formation of teams.
- Presentation of the problem to be solved by the participants: the organizers talk about the task, the conditions for its implementation and timing, and also introduce the mentors.
- Educational block. Occasionally, hackathon-themed lectures are held for participants to inspire fresh ideas.
- Consulting mentors. Teams talk to each mentor separately, discuss their ideas, and ask for advice.
- Participants work directly on projects. This is the main and longest part of the hackathons.
- Project defense (pitching). The teams will present their ideas to the judges, make a decision, and award the winners.
The structure may differ from the hackathon to the hackathon. For example, there is not always an educational block - sometimes everything that the participants need to know can be told during the presentation.
Why Hackathons are good?
In this section, discover smart ways in Hackathon preparation. You have to identify unique ideas in the programming to stand out from the crowd of participants in this event.
1. Reliable Software Solutions
Every participant in this talent fest works on unique ideas to bring out innovative solutions. At the end of the day, the participants will come out with stunning and fully functioning software. These solutions assist entrepreneurs and industrialists to enhance their business activities.
2. Build a Bridge
The Hackathon creates a bridge between talented minds and business investors. The participants can startup with a new career after winning the title in Hackathon. This platform connects bright minds with business personalities worldwide. It provides an environment for communication between the software developers and the industrialist around the globe.
3. Innovative Ideas
It is the space where you can find innovative and creative ideas. You will be astonished by witnessing the blooming concepts of young minds. Every topic the participants handle will be unique and you will be carried away by their technical knowledge in creating complex solutions effortlessly. A Hackathon is the right place for the birth of creative ideas. The competitors work hard to bring out reliable solutions to stand out amidst the crowd. Here, every individual strives to prove their coding and design talent without any compromises.
4. A strong bond with participants
Most Hackathons take place at least for two days. People meet and share their ideas thereby building a bond. It is the place where different culture meets despite diversity. The participants connect with the technical spirit. The sportive minds of the participants assist in developing healthy relationships.
5. Discover new tools
In Hackathon, every teamwork with unique tools to ease their software development process. You can explore ample tools with amazing functionalities. It is the space where you can learn a lot regarding the development and design field. It triggers the curiosity in the participants to explore the unknown tools. In this competitive ground, you will get to know a wide range of software tools, design applications, etc.
The 3 Best Hackathons Programmers Should Attend
1. HackZurich
HackZurich is known as the biggest hackathon in Europe. This is an annual, non-stop coding competition that’s held in Zurich, Switzerland for a period of 40 hours.
2. TechCrunch Disrupt
TechCrunch Disrupt is a series of events that takes place in New York City, San Francisco, and Berlin. The TechCrunch Disrupt events largely revolve around early-stage startups that compete for prize money, media attention, and venture capital.
3. hackNY
While hackNY is a New York City hackathon intended for student programmers, the organization is welcoming of coders from all universities, backgrounds, and skill levels. The hackNY hackathon is typically held on the New York University campus for a period of 24 hours. But, hackNY occasionally takes place at Columbia University as well.
5 great hackathon examples
1. Cooking
Most people have no idea how to properly prepare food. This application will help the user to cook something, even if he does not know the recipe. It is necessary to describe the available ingredients, and the application will show the corresponding dish that can be prepared from this set of products.
2. Anti-thief
With this tool, the user will be able to send a signal to the police station about any atrocities noticed. In addition, this application may include a database with useful information on criminal activity in the city.
3. Design and interior design
It's so difficult to think over everything you need for a comfortable living environment, isn't it? And experimenting with a budget is not an option. This app is designed to help you design your living space. The user photographs the room and applies various designs, patterns, and elements to the picture, achieving the ideal room.
4. Security control
This tool will provide access to monitoring your security systems via Wi-Fi, will allow you to respond to guests at the front door, monitor cameras, etc. All this can be accessed on a smartphone.
5. Online presentation
Sometimes it can be difficult to prepare a presentation for your team. With a cloud Android app, this tedious process will be eliminated. All team members can collaborate and contribute online.
Tools you can use in Hackathon
Modern design has continued to evolve beyond pixel-perfect layouts. The designer is no longer limited to preparing wireframes and icons but can use a myriad of tools that increase their versatility and make communication through design even more powerful. Some tools range from re-writing and transferring sources to code, but there is no doubt that the interface prototype is very important today.
Wondershare Mockitt is the largest and most well-known prototyping tool that allows you to create high-quality prototypes of websites and mobile apps. It has wide functionality with a wide range of tools. Compatible with Windows and macOS. It's a lightweight, fast-paced process that results in a simple, straightforward walk through the interface. It integrates seamlessly with Sketch and lets you create a working prototype in minutes.
Features:
- Really simple service: you open and work, no instructions are needed.
- You can build a prototype from scratch, or you can use ready-made templates and then modify them to your liking.
- A huge number of blocks and templates: buttons, forms, text fields, galleries, etc. - this allows you to create a site prototype block by block, and not add each element to it separately.
- The ability to edit blocks is very convenient - you can add or remove elements with one click in the editing settings menu.
- There are also free pictures and icons you can use to spice up your layout.
- The templates are responsive by default. That is, you do not need to separately create prototypes for each device, you can just see how your future site will look in the mobile version or on a tablet.
Wondershare Mockitt Guide:
1. You just have to enter Wondershare Mockitt official website through this link: https://mockitt.wondershare.com/. After visiting the site, you need to sign up for an account with your email.
2. Then you will enter the Mockitt dashboard, simply click "Create" to create a new prototype or a folder. Here we will create a prototype.
3. Then you will need to select the device option, you can create a project for phone, iPad, web page, watch, or some other sizes. Besides, you can also create a prototype from the template, there are plenty of templates you can reuse or get inspiration.
4. After creating the project you will see the dashboard where a lot of options are available for designing purposes.
5. After the completion of the project you can easily export, share, and download your design.
