Not Just a Hackathon Win, But A life lesson worth Priceless !!

⚠️ Disclaimer: All of the below written is from a perspective of a young college student, person who is eager to learn from the best and a wannabe person who wants to do stuff that has a real impact in changing the world for good.

👨‍🎓 A Student Take on this…….

Let’s take this journey 🚊 from the bottom’s up and explains…………

How and why the heck a person like me wanted to participate in a Hackathon. Why it took me 1 year and 1 month ⌛ after joining an Engineering Degree to participate in a Hackathon ??

I am a person who likes to live on a life mantra that the world 🌐 is round (which it actually is) and you never know who might cross path ✌🏻 with you in future who can help you to take to the next level. Thas’s why I love to part of communities 💬 and learn from people from are much more experienced and much older than me ( Don’t take this as a bad thing, I am complimenting you guys) and the tech 💻 world bubble is so much kind and generous and one of the best places to find these people are Tech Hackathons and I always wanted to be a part and leave a small impact on this community and that’s when I thought Sanchit you should take part in the hackathon. 🚀

But I never wanted to do any work half-hearted 💔or for the sake of doing things, just to show that we have done something ( Which unfortunately I have to do in my college 🧑‍🏫 to do this assignment and that but after that, it is just a folder in my drive which is buried so deep that even google forgets to remind to update that).🤔

And I was too bored in this whole quarantine situation, so I thought let’s give it a shot and take part in the very first hackathon

How did I find this Hackathon ( Because some of the friends wonder where the hell I get these type of opportunities )

If I have to answer this question 😅in 2020 where everyone has spent more time at a time starting at their screens then my friend you will be never reading this, right?

GOOGLE, that’s your thing to do in these times, if you can google it then my friend can solve any problem today. 😜

How were my first class and my result & in the end and the most important who were my classmates, teachers and the lessons I learnt?

Let’s talk later about my result later on and talk about the first class. So the Hackathon started way before it’s starting date, as I have found this maybe a month early 📅 and sometimes there are things that are just an indication from the upper power to guide you all the way, and this was that. I found the Maxathon ( hackathon name) in the month of July and it was starting out in September and I knew somehow that participating in this and reaching to the pitching stage would be itself achievement 🏆 for me, as it would be my first ever hackathon and that too a month-long. I started planning out the things with my friend Arnav Mahajan we made a plan on the notion and that was the start of the journey of something which we both can never think off.

Let’s Get into the Juicy Stuff of the Maxathon

Phase #1……………….

The hack was supposed to start from Sep-1–2020 and the result will be announced on Oct-3–2020, our goal 🥅 was to just reach the finals and that was it, it would be something very big us ( finalist in an international 🗺️ hack in our first few hacks, winning was not even a thought)

The hack was about majorly about the blockchain community so we both tried to study📜 something about that and try to come up with a plan till Oct-3, I can say we come up with something but it was never quite that polished, fortunately, on an opening day the mentors explained for noobs like us they have a frontend challenge ( Track #5: UI/UX Data Analytics), I still remember I was sitting or say kind of in a sleeping 🛌 position on my couch when hearing an hour-long opening ceremony and get a brief of what was about to come if we get committed to it.

We ideated many ideas back and forth again and again on calls 📱 and much other stuff and try to come up with an idea which no one had ever come up with and after 7–10 days we came up with something which was interesting and most important we believed we can develop that. Remember I have not done programming since January and will start over with learning and then implementing and with just 2 of us we could never even make a mockup any idea. 💡

Phase #2

That’s when the next part of our hack comes in place, The Team Formation and there is a very strange and weird coincidence that happened with me, each and every person that I talked to in the team formation end up being the winner of their respective track. ⛹️

For my team Med-Chain the very person was Arnav Mahajan (obviously we were working for more than a month) but luckily we met Sam, Akinde & Edward and we were a perfect team for the project, as we covered each and every aspect of the tech 🖥️ and non-tech skills 🥫

Other than these 3 people, I talked with two more person in the team formation session but the connection did not happen and we move with separate ways but in the end, the result was each and every person whom I was n contact face to face ( meaning virtually) was a winner🏆 in their track and I feel that it is what we call as beginner charm.

Phase #3

Now after the team formation and setting up the project page (which was yet to be filled on the Maxathon platform) the next steps were to finally ideate the project and get the ball rolling ⚽. To be honest this phase ⏱️took the most of the time with various reasons as mentioned :

1. Our team which was yet to be named were scattered all over the world, literally all over the world, meaning UK, India & Dubai and the crazy time zone difference we were working was just insane, even it took us 1–2 hours just to fix up a meeting time for discussion because when someone proposes a time we would convert back to our timezone and then with the third timezone in which our teammate was, it was just crazy. But my friends made it till the end.
2. The project Med-Chain came after a long almost 10 day back and forth ideation session and we started with a very different idea and that was mine but after having a lot, really a lot of discussions I get to know my flaw in my idea i.e. the power of decision making which was the key and I was thinking small, not to the scale which my team wanted, but I am really glad that Sam and other members helped me to get out of that bubble of the mindset and helped to think big in every work we did.

Phase #4.1 …………………………..

The next phase after the Ideation was actually two, not one, they were running simultaneously on both fronts i.e talking with mentors and the development phase.

Let’s start with converting the idea to a real product.

Fortunately, our team had one of the best UI/UX designer that I have met in my short amount of life that I have experienced in my working journey, and to be honest: SAM you are just amazing and would really like to work with you ahead. So from the start we never took stress on how the pitch and the design of the product, the user experience would look like, we were more worried that he would design so amazing that we would not be able to code it, but we did fortunately from a lot of help from Arnav, Youtube and Opensource community. A rough draft of the product design from Miro board to Zepling and coding it was really a wonderful journey for me, as I was kind of entering into the tech field for the very first time and it was my first ever hackathon. The team divided the tasks and we had almost a 5–6 days at max. to program and develop this into reality and my friend Arnav gave a huge sacrifice amount of time into this and put a hold on his internships and stuff didn’t attend online classes ( I never did so it was not an issue for me ) and the stress level we both handled before the last day was just insane not to forget I suffered physically and mentally because of being sick in the last couple of days I would just be on a 100-degree Celcius and develop the platform and just sleep and it was a hard time for me being sick and kind of connecting the dots here and there so we wouldn't lack behind and had a chance of winning this.

Phase #4.2 …………………

Now let’s talk about the discussion with mentors which is the best part for a person like me who loves to connect with founders and learn and take life lessons on how to grow this and I can say I have met some really good people like Rafael, Scott, Gabriel, Dr.Amin, Lucile and I would Thank you for your guidance and advise, the time you made for me in these crazy time, without your help the dynamics could be a lot of different. Each and everyone spent a significant time to help me like hours in a span of a week, and I just appreciate your patience and sharing some insights to me.

Each and every one of you provided some important part to solve the puzzle, Dr.Amin provided a lot of help with our prediction model and how to actually utilize the data and the impact it could have and he was the very first mentor I talked to and It was very helpful.

Then I had a session with Rafael but I cancelled at the very last moment like 2 minutes early and if he had not contacted me afterwards I would like literally lost a great an opportunity, he mailed me and I am glad he did because the talk’s that I had with him as a mentor and as a person is just amazing. We had more than one discussion and the man you really helped with the pitch and the live pitch you did really helped us a lot and I hope we can always be in touch.

Now comes a wicked part Rafael who was a mentor and mentored me is being mentored by Rafael who also mentored me and this cycle is just crazy and he shared a really great insight from the blockchain perspective which I never thought off and would never cross my mind and he helped to fill that piece of the puzzle.

Scott, a very amazing person and very kind and loved the way he helped and provided a lot of feedback to my team, also helped with the pitch session and much other legal stuff.

Lucie, what an amazing person she is, literally we had a pitch session and updating and redesign of that which took more than an hour and I appreciate the time and the feedback she provided really helped a lot on the demo day.

Just to close this I would like to give a huge round of applause and a huge thank on the behalf of the Med-Chain team, you all really helped us a lot.

Phase #5 …………………

The final phase has many small bits and pieces including the pitch and the final day and the waiting with completing the puzzle of the development with other team members.

Before the demo day, I was very confident that we could win this and take this home boy’s, but Arnav was a saying let’s not get ahead of us: which is very kind of him.

It was decided that Sam would lead the pitch and, to be honest, he just rocked it and not to forget the way he handled the conversation and a little contribution from my side which I knew the judges would ask the team, and I was prepared for that: Thanks to Rafael for that.

And when we pitched, just after that I knew we took this by a mile as no other team was so close to us in terms of the pitch and way we have handled the whole development and the communication.

When we heard the words “ The Winner of the UI/UX challenge is Med-Chain” that was a huge moment for me and I knew I just achieved something which is totally amazing and could not be done from all the help of my team and the mentors.

THANKS, A LOT of GUYS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On the close, I would like to thank the team of Maxonrow who provided this opportunity and the team of BeMyApp who coordinated all the hack, and it was a tough job for them but they managed it perfectly.