Context
I got into UC Berkeley's AI hackathon (biggest in the world!), and attended it this weekend.
Admittedly, I knew very little about working with AI. My team and I built a simple chatbot using resources from the sponsors, OpenAI and Hume AI.
Being in community college, I hadn't been exposed to the "college computer science" culture, and it was amazing to be around so many other students interested in building things and working in tech. I made a lot of new friends.
Takeaways
This was also my first large hackathon. My main takeaway is that the marketing and idea of what you're building, at a hackathon, is often far more important than your actual code. This event almost seemed like an idea competition -- with all the money and hype around AI, investors need products to invest in, and the hackathon was basically a think tank. I talked to judges who were already thinking of investing into startups or products born at the hackathon.
Another revelation is that winning teams plan out their projects weeks, if not months, in advance to fit into specific tracks for prizes. During the hackathon, they quickly code using their wireframes, and spend the rest of their time networking and finalizing their pitches.
I didn't think about this at first, but it makes a lot of sense considering the scale of the event and the limited number of large ($50k investment!!) prizes.
Overall -- I'm super hyped to attend the third rendition of this hackathon next year! (preferably with a better plan this time)