I am currently pursuing my 3rd year B-Tech in Information Technology at G. Narayanamma Institute of Technology and Science, Hyderabad. Here, I am sharing my second hackathon experience as a college student.
July 2023:
My three teammates and I, all in our 3rd year 1st semester, heard about the NASA International Space Apps Hackathon. It’s a 24-hour event where participants are given space-related themes to build something—an app, a website, or even a game. We chose open source as our theme, meaning we could implement anything related to the main theme, regardless of other sub-themes. We decided to build a game using Unity, even though it was our first time using Unity and C#.
August 2023:
The big day arrived, and we packed our essentials along with our laptops, knowing we’d be spending the entire night at the college. After the introductory speech, we headed to our assigned room to prepare our pitch. In the first round of evaluation, we had to explain our problem statement along with our idea. We named our game ‘Astro Shooter’. Over the next 6 hours, we coded together, ironed out errors, and by the time of the second evaluation, we were able to showcase 40% of our project. We took breaks for snacks and dinner, and even had a musical session at 2 AM. After that, at around 4 PM, we had the final evaluation of the project, and by then, we were able to show 100% completion. At 7 AM, they selected 14 teams out of 52 and asked us to prepare a presentation to present by 8 AM. We prepared a presentation and presented it before the panel, and they finally selected 7 teams out of those 14 for the national round, which was a 36-hour hackathon held at Chandigarh University.
October 2023:
Around mid-September, the problem statements were released, and we chose the theme ‘Planetary Tourism Office’, where we had to prepare itineraries for planetary tourism. Again, we discussed and decided to use Blender for our project. We booked our train tickets to Chandigarh University and on 4th October, we headed there. The nationals were on the dates of 7th and 8th October. After traveling for 2 days by train (which was the best journey ever), we rested for 1 day and then participated in the national level hackathon. Again, after the hackathon, we rested for 1 day and reached Hyderabad on 11th October. Although we didn’t make it into the top 5, we learned a lot from the experience. We had fun together, fought, laughed, cried, travelled alone without our parents, made new friends, expanded our network, and, lastly, we made memories that will forever be in our hearts.