3Ps of attending hackathons and events

Chase your dreams and not the money. Money will follow you automatically!

It is still in my memory about the first hackathon I have ever attended conducted by Microsoft three years ago at Bengaluru, India. It held the Guinness record for maximum participation at a coding festival. I have won a lot of events since then, but more than that, I have been able to build a good network of people: entrepreneurs, developers, designers and also a few experts and investors.

Hackathons are not about winning, but more about learning from your mistakes and building something out of nothing over night most of the time. Every time I end up in attending hackathons with different sets of people. When you start attending hackathons or any other events, that will mainly improve your networking capability, communication and technical skills.

The three reasons I attend hackathons are:

*People***

*Networking is a far more desired outcome I can get out of a hackathon than winning any prize money. I have a huge list of contacts of developers, designers, product managers, investors and executives around. Most of them have really been helpful even after the event. It is always fruitful in meeting people and bringing ideas into reality. I have helped a lot of smaller early stage startups in building their product. *

Perseverance

*I love taking on challenges. I was never this way before, but hackathons have helped me yearn for challenges and gets my adrenaline flowing. Hackathons made me to have the confidence before building a MVP or a product. The output is directionally proportional to the interest you have on the product. *

Prizes

*This should not be the primary reason for you to attend an hackathon, but it is still a great motivator, especially if you are hacking as a team. It is like building a human tower to snatch the hanging cash bag. I have snatched it a few times with the help of amazing people around. *

There are a few points that might be helpful who wants to attend technical events and hackathons. It may serve fellow hackers to keep the following in mind. These rules are applicable everywhere whether you are building a MVP for your product or you are attending a hackathon event.

Having completed a project is better than trying to perfect it.
You can’t build a perfect product in 24 hours. But you can build a MVP with nice aesthetics and there are so many free and open source applications to accomplish this.
When you make your presentation or demo, try to explain more about your application’s benefits/uses than its features.
When it comes to building a mobile product, the user should be absolutely convinced, else something is amiss.

Attending events like hackathons and developer meetings gives me a huge confidence boost on building something bigger with bigger imaginations and goals. Whether you are technically involved in a company or not, it is always good to have a good network of people and learn new things. You don’t know where is the way to success.

Let me know if you are looking for help in kickstarting your idea into a company! Go ahead and this is the right time to do it!

This article was published already in** yourstory.com**