3 Things I Learned From My First Hackathon

I was recently given the opportunity to participate in JPMorgan Chase’s Social Good Hackathon, and as this was my first hackathon I wanted to write down my thoughts about what I learned from the experience.

1. Being able to work as a team is as important as your code

I had the pleasure of working with a great team during the event and all that we accomplished would not have been possible had it not been for our great teamwork. Even before any of us started writing any code we had to work together to brainstorm our idea based on the prompt, outline the basic structure of our application, decide what languages we wanted to use, and divide up the work for the day. Had we struggled to get along even in these early stages we would have set ourselves up for failure, but luckily this was not the case and I was able to see the value of teamwork in action.

2. Make sure to set realistic goals for the time you have available

As the hackathon was being put on by Chase, each team was assigned a pair of mentors from JPMorgan to help guide groups through the day and provide assistance where needed. One major point that our mentors made sure to drive home was to keep our goals reasonable for the time we had. This is not to say that you can’t dream big conceptually and build with larger ideas in mind, but make sure you think of the event as more of a proof of concept showcase rather than one for finished products.

3. Be prepared to learn

My final takeaway was that no matter how skilled you are you should go into a hackathon prepared to learn on the fly. For example, some of the languages used by my team I only had a basic understanding of, so I needed to learn in the moment how I could help and also make sure the code I was writing was compatible. Overall the event was an excellent experience, and I am excited to participate in more hackathons in the future.