Krists Avots – Community and Business Development, Infogram

1. How To Survive A Hackathon
(And Win)
Krists Avots infogr.am
Priit Salumaa mooncascade.com

2. How We Will Entertain You For The Next Hour
1. Intro
2. MVP
3. The Week’s Agenda
4. The Mentors
5. Kostja's Inspiration
6. The Battle Plan
7. The Shortcuts
8. The Task For The Next Hour

3. &fun
passioncreativity
hard work

4. The Minimum Viable Product
Or How Not To Polish Your Rocket

5. DailyPerfect
SayAt.me

6. The MVP Mindset 1/3
Your Time is Limited
Hackathon ~= Startup

7. The MVP Mindset 2/3
Prioritize HARD
Deal Only with the Right Things
Maybe vs MUST
Low hanging fruits

8. The MVP Mindset 3/3
Hacks Rule Over Beautiful Solutions
80/20 Rule Hits Especially Hard

9. The Hackathon Week

10. The Hackathon Week
Friday
Choose technologies
Split responsibilities in team
Battle plan set up
Over the weekend Validate prototype
Monday 30% done
Tuesday
50% functionality
Last chance to pivot
Wednesday Core functionality
Thursday
Bug fixing. App uploaded by the
evening
Friday Preparing for technical demos

11. The Morning Checkpoints
1 min What have you achieved?
1 min What will you do?
1 min Any problems & issues?

12. During The Day
Mentoring based on reported issues
Emergency line eia2015@garage48.org
*Grab mentors by hand
16:00 Mentors-Walk-Around Checkpoint
NB: Ask For Help Immediately!

13. Meet The Mentors

14. Kostja’s Inspiration

15. Why Are You Doing a
Hackathon?

16. To Create Something* of
Value**.
*anything, really, as long as
it is more than just “ideas”
** “ideas” on their own have
no value

17. Why Are You Doing a
Hackathon?

18. Because when done
properly, a hackaton lets you
create something valuable* in
short time.
*valuable enough for the
purposes of going on with EIA

19. How Should You Do a
Hackathon?

20. Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Rest
Work hard
Work harder
Rest
Rule #1: Plan your nights

21. Rule #2: Dream small
What can you/your team
create in two nights?
Something tiny, but nice and
working has value.
Something large, but broken
– does not.

22. Rule #3: Do not “pivot”!
Your task during the
hackathon is to implement
your vision, not to decide
whether it will be the next big
thing.

24. The Battle Plan

25. The Battle Plan
One eye on the screen, one on the timer
Define goal for Thursday
List of features by priority
Split the work in 1-2h chunks
Write down who is doing what

26. The Battle Plan: Example

27. Some More Advice 1/2
Help each other out, you are a team
Don't be hesitant to ask for help
(google first )

28. Some More Advice 2/2
«Who writes the code,
chooses the platform» / Grüner
Choose what you know best
Or learn (remember it takes time)

29. The Shortcuts

30. The Shortcuts (Look Up The Playbook)
• Cloud plafroms IBM Bluemix, Appery.io etc.
• Drag-and-drop prototyping plaforms - Proto.io, fluidui.com
• Landing page builders - vix.com, launchrock.co,
• Android Studio- an integrated development environment
for developing on the Android platform
• XCode - an integrated development environment for
developing on the iOS platform
• Ready made libraries (think of login etc.)
• Mobile backend as a service solutions - AnyPresence,
Appcelerator, FeedHenry, Kinvey, Parse, Firebase
• API sources Mashape, Progweb, Github

31. The Task*
*For The Next Hour

32. The Task
Write down your punchline
Choose the platforms/technologies used
Build your battle plan

33. …
The Big Goal:
Build Working Product