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PRANJUL RATHOUR
PRANJUL RATHOUR

Posted on Originally published at pranjulrathour.scult.in

Etiquette at the judges' table during live demos: what helps and what undermines a team

#hackathonjudging #etiquette #livedemos

A nervous team pitching in front of a judges' table reads every small signal — a judge checking their phone, a side conversation, a confused frown — as feedback on the pitch itself, whether or not that's what the judge meant.

What helps a team perform their best

  • Full attention during the pitch itself — save note-writing for the gaps between sentences, not constant head-down scribbling.
  • A neutral, attentive expression rather than visible reactions mid-pitch, positive or negative — both can throw a nervous presenter off.
  • Asking questions that are genuinely about understanding the project, not testing whether the team can be rattled.

What undermines it

Side conversations between judges during a pitch are the single most common and most damaging habit — it visibly signals disinterest to a team that's already nervous, regardless of how the scoring actually goes.

See handling Q&A after a technical talk for the speaker's-side version of managing a room's attention.

About Pranjul Rathour

Pranjul Rathour in front of an Integral Startup Foundation hackathon backdrop
At an Integral Startup Foundation hackathon

Pranjul Rathour in a checked shirt inside a packed college auditorium
In a packed college auditorium

Pranjul Rathour in a suit and tie with a lanyard at a formal campus event
At a formal campus event

Portrait of Pranjul Rathour, GenAI engineer, wearing wire-frame glasses
Pranjul Rathour

Pranjul Rathour presenting on stage in a blue polo, with his Annapurna demo video on the screen behind him
Presenting Annapurna on stage

Pranjul Rathour is a GenAI engineer from Kanpur, India, and CTO at SCULT INDIA, currently shipping production RAG,
fine-tuning and agentic AI systems, mentoring 200+ students through TechVerse Enclave, and judging and speaking at
student hackathons across India. Updated 2026-09-07.

Reach out if you want to talk GenAI, book a campus session, or invite him to judge:

Pranjul Rathour · GenAI engineer, 3x hackathon winner, campus mentor. Open for GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks: pranjulrathour41@gmail.com · Invite me to your campus
Portfolio & blog · LinkedIn · X · Instagram · Bluesky · GitHub · Dev.to

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