This blog is the second part of my blog series named Hackathon Arc. Make sure to read the first part Phase Of Uncertainty.
So the bell rang for the hackathon at our home soil. Now I had to do that frustrating part again, assembling the team. I already had Godabaris and Anuska from my previous hackathons. As the member limit for this hackathon was 6, I had to find another three, so I looked at my batchmates and picked those two who looked remotely interested in development. Then I also take the bet on a junior.
First of my friends who was coming to my team is Rakesh, at that he was LeetCode god of our campus(well he still is...), but he will be known for different things in the future.
Rohan was an expert in integrating Flowwise AI workflows. For those who don't know, it is similar to n8n automation.
So now we have to register our team and for that we have to get a team name. Rakesh came with the name Yantram as she was searching for Sanskrit names for us and accidentally got into Yantram. Yeah no fancy storyline here for you guys unfortunately. Anuska added .dev extension to make it sound like a hackathon team.
After registering for the hackathon, we appeared for mid evaluation with our ppt and Figma prototype. It was a easy ride and we are qualified for finals on Jan 4th and 5th 2025. The stage was set for us for our first ever overnight onsite hackathon.
My biggest target going into this hackathon was absorb the environment and take the experience. Winning was not coming into my mind as I have lost count how many times I have wanted just to participate in such events but I failed. So I just wanted to enjoy these moments.
I contacted my friend at NITR and he joined us as mentor. His name is Prasad Patra, at that time he was already multiple times hackathon winner. So he was perfect guy to guide us.
So then comes the hackathon day, after some minor inconvenience of the inauguration ceremony, our hacking period begins. We were building an Android app using Flutter and backend was being written using NodeJS and MySQL.
Time for some confessions. None of us knew what Git and GitHub were. Except Godabaris none have ever written or seen any flutter code. I was supposed to be the backend developer of the team who has only experience in Flask. I had never written a single piece of code of NodeJS and I had never heard anything about Postman.
Well but we learnt everything on the go. In the evening, I designed all the APIs for backend. Rakesh, Godabaris and Anuska started designing pages for the app. Rohan started working on the chatbot.
Then comes the night part. The junior and Rohan went to the hostel. We 4 stayed post dinner. And that coding phase is still one of the best and memorable coding phase of my life. That night we had everything. Tea breaks, Cake breaks, bonfire and hours of ultra-focused coding. After that focused coding session we also chilled out and played Truth and Dare. Shout out to Sahasransu and Stutee who stayed with us and motivated us through out the night when they could have easily gone to their respective hostels and slept.
We fixed bugs and made the MVP ready. Rohan along with the junior prepared the PPT. The Jury members were satisfied with our product and presentation we then become hopeful for our result for the very first time.
Three years after our final evaluation we were at a fully packed auditorium. Then the winners name were announced. First Place.........Yantram.dev
The auditorium erupted. We were their home team at the end. We went to the stage received the cheque, award and certificate. We competed and won our first hackathon. That 30k prize money felt special. Everyone enjoyed the pie of it. That 5k stayed in my UPI wallet for too long before I had no options left not to spend it.
In most of the hackathons, the team size was 4. The Yantram.dev legacy continued with Godabaris, Anuska and Rakesh. We couldn't made it to final of VSSUT hackathon but we go on and won it at CV Raman. Rohan went there with his own team too as unfortunately team size was 4. Well Rohan will soon come back to our team but for now wait for that part.
Things won't always go smooth and fairy tale.
Wait for the third blog of this series.
The Reality Check
Top comments (1)
I felt very guilty for not contributing enough, and that feeling stayed with me. Exactly one year later, during this year college hackathon, I decided to give my absolute best. I worked with complete dedication without taking a nap or a break not because anyone forced me, but because it came from within. I was genuinely motivated and fully immersed in what I was building. The excitement and passion for the work kept me energized, and it felt like a natural drive pushing me forward beyond my usual limits.