QA: Hackatons

The final part of the hackathon trilogy. In the first part, I talked about the motivation to participate in such events. The second part was devoted to the mistakes of the organizers and their results. The final part will answer questions that do not fit in the first two parts.



- Tell me how you started participating in the hackathons.



- I studied at the magistracy of the University of Lappeenranta simultaneously solving data analysis competitions. My typical day looked like this: getting up at 8, a few couples at the university, then a competition and a trainee until midnight (while I submit a lecture, I watch lectures or read articles). Such a tight schedule bore fruit, and I won the data analysis competition MERC-2017 (what was even the post on Habré ). The victory threw self-confidence, and when I accidentally stumbled upon information about the SkinHack 2 hackathon in Moscow, I decided to visit my parents and at the same time find out what it is - a hackathon.

')

The hackathon itself turned out pretty funny. There were two tracks on data analysis with a clear metric and data with prize money of 100k rubles. The third track was on the development of applications with a prize of 50k, and there were no participants in it. At one point, the organizer said that a window with a button without a functional could win 50k, because the prize could not be unpaid. I did not learn to program applications (I do not compete where I can easily be “turned over”), but for me it was a clear message that the fields in hackathons are not clogged.



Then I solved both tracks by analyzing the data alone. I found a face in the data, which allowed me to beat out the ideal soon, but the column with the face was not in the test data that I received two hours before the end of the event (by the way, then I understood that the presence of the “target” column in the train is not considered to be ). At the same time, the leaderboard was opened, my submit without a face ranked third out of five, there was a big gap before the first one and I decided not to waste time and left.



After I analyzed with a fresh mind what happened, I found a lot of mistakes (one of my habits - mentally scrolling what happened with a notebook and analyzing errors, their cause, and what could be changed - such a pleasant legacy of a semi-professional poker game). But one thing was clear for sure - there are many value in hackathons, and I simply have to implement it. After this event, I began to monitor events and groups, and the subsequent hackathon did not take long to wait. Then another, and another ...



- Why are you doing hackathons, not kaglom?



- At the moment I do not like Kagl. From a certain level of skill, without specific reasons for participation, Kagl becomes less useful than other activities. I participated a lot before, apparently, I managed to somehow “get off”.



- Why hackathons, but not work on your project?



- I am impressed by the idea to do something cool with my own hands at a slow pace. The guys from ODS have organized ODS pet projects for everyone who wants to do his project at the weekend with like-minded people. I think that soon I will join them.



- How do you find events?



- The main source is hackathon.com (world) and chat in a telegram of Russian Hackers (Russia). Plus, announcements of events skip in advertising in social networks and in linkedin. If you find nothing, you can see here: mlh.io, devpost.com, hackevents.co, hackalist.org, HackathonsNear.me, hackathon.io.



- Do you prepare a solution plan before participation or everything is decided on the go? For example, a week before the hackathon you think: “You need this and such a specialist, you will need to search”?



- If the grocery hackathon - yes, I'm preparing. A few weeks before I think of what I will do, I figure out who can come in handy, I assemble a team of friends or members of past hackathons.



- Is it really possible to hack a hackath alone? What if there is no command?

- Datasaens hakatons are real (I am a living example), I did not see the grocery ones, although I also think that yes. Unfortunately, sometimes the organizers impose a limit on the minimum number of participants in a team. I think this is due to the fact that not all the “loners” reach the finals (that is, they simply leave with the first difficulties), participation in the team is still holding back. Even after the event it is assumed that you will continue to work on the project. With the team bring the project to mind will be easier.



In general, I advise you to always participate with the team. If you do not have your own team, the organizers will always help in order to find or create one.



- How to cope with fatigue during the hackathon?

- The hackathon is given 2 days to work, this is 48 hours (30-48 hours, take 48 for ease of calculation). We remove time for sleep (16-20 hours), no more than 30 remains. Of these, 8 hours will actually go on productive work (on average). If you properly organize work (sleep, food, access to fresh air, charging, minutes of awareness, correct communication with the team and switching activities), then you can finish the deep work hours to 12-14. After such work you will feel exhausted, but it will be a pleasant tiredness. Coding without sleep and interruptions, interrupted by power engineers, is the path to failure.



- Do you have your ready hackathon pipelines? How did they appear to you, how are they arranged (do you have .py files in each folder, each for your own task, etc.) and how do you start to create these yourself?



- I do not use completely ready solutions of past hakatons in new ones, but I have my own zoo of models and pipelines from past competitions. I do not have to rewrite the standard pieces from scratch (for example, the correct target encoding or a simple mesh to extract the intent from the text), which saves me a lot of time.



At the moment, it looks like this: for every competition or hackathon there is a repo on the githaba, laptops, scripts and small documentation about what is happening are stored in it. Plus, there is a separate repo for all boxed “chips” (like the correct target encoding with cross-validation). I do not think that this is the most elegant solution, but so far it suits me.



I would start by saving all my code in folders and writing short documentation (why, what, how I did the result).



- Is it possible to prepare a MVP from scratch in such a short time or all participants come with ready-made solutions?



- I can only say about projects related to datasens - yes, it is possible. MVP for me is a combination of two factors:

• Viable idea presented as a product (i.e. painted business canvas). There should always be a clear understanding of why and for whom we are making the product. Sometimes projects with a well-founded project, but without a prototype win prizes, and this is not surprising. Unfortunately, many participants cannot abstract from the bitterness of defeat and write off their failures to the organizers' short-sightedness, continuing to saw the modelki it is not clear for whom on the following hackathons.
• Some indicator that you can do this product (application, code, description of the pipelines).

It happens that a team comes to the hackathon with a ready solution and tries to “fit” it to the task of the organizers. Such teams are cut off at a technical screening, or “only” the part they did at the site is “counted”. I have not seen such teams in the winners, but I think it is still beneficial for them to walk because of future value ( contacts, datasets, etc. ).



- Are there examples of bringing handicrafts realized on hackathons to production / startup?



- Yes. I had three cases when I was brought to production. Once, twice, by someone else’s hands, based on my ideas and the code that I wrote on the hackathon. I also know a couple of teams that continued to work with the company as consultants. I do not know the final results, but most likely something was done to the end. I didn’t organize startups myself and I don’t know that someone would do it, although I’m sure there are examples.



- After participating in many hackathons, what advice would you give yourself if you could return to the past?

1. Tactics are more important than maneuvers. Represent each solution as a finished product. An idea, a jupiter laptop, an algorithm costs nothing if it is not clear who will pay for it.
2. Before designing anything, answer the question not “what?”, But “why?” And “how?”. Example: when designing any ML solution, at the beginning think about the ideal algorithm: what does it get to the input, how are its predictions used in the future?
3. Join the team.

- What is usually fed on hakatonah?



- Usually, hackathons are fed poorly: pizza, energy, soda. Almost always the food is organized in the form of a buffet (or a dispensing table) to which a huge queue is lined up. Usually they do not feed at night, although there was a case in one competition in Paris that they left for food for the night - chips, donuts and a cola. I will introduce the organizers' mental process: “So, what do programmers eat there? Oh, right! Chips, donuts - that's all. Put this rubbish to them. ”The next day I asked the organizers:“ Guys, is it possible to do something else for the night? Well, there, for example, porridge? ”After that, they looked at me like an idiot. Famous French hospitality.



On good hackathons, food is ordered in boxes, there is a division into regular, vegetarian and kosher meals. Plus, they put a fridge with yogurt, cereal - for those who want to eat. Tea, coffee, water - standard. Hackathon Hack Moscow 2 was remembered - they mentally fed on borsch and meatballs with purees in the dining room of the 1C office.



- Does the hackathon's sanity depend, so to speak, on the professional sphere of the organizers (for example, the best hackathons are conducted by consultants)?



- The best hackathons were from organizers who either organized hackathons before, or participated earlier. Perhaps this is the only factor on which the quality of the event depends.



- How to understand that you are not a noob and it's time for a hackathon?



- The best time to go to the hackathon is a year ago. The second best time is now. So dare, be mistaken, study - it is normal. Even the neural network - the greatest invention of man after the wheel and gradient boosting over trees - can not distinguish a cat from a dog in the first era of training.



- What are the "red flags" immediately say that the event will not really and do not need to waste time?

• A clear description of what needs to be done (relevant for product hakaktons). If during registration you will be given a clear task, then it is better to stay at home. In my memory there was not a single good hakaton with TK. For comparison: Well - do us something related to the analysis of audio conversations. Bad - make us an application that would be able to divide the conversation into two separate audio tracks for each person.
• A small prize fund. If you are asked to make a “tinder for an online store with AI” and a first place prize of 500 euros and a minimum team size of 5 people - perhaps you should not waste time (yes, this is a real hackathon held in Munich).
• Lack of data (relevant for datasens hackathons). Organizers usually provide basic information about the event and sometimes a dataset sample. If not provided - ask, you will not lose. If for 2-3 it is unclear what data will be provided and whether they will be at all - this is a red flag.
• New organizers. Do not be lazy and google information about the organizers of the hackathon. If they hold an event of this kind for the first time - it is likely that something will go wrong. On the other hand, if the organizer and members of the jury have already conducted hackathons or have actively participated in the past, this is a green flag.

“At one hackathon, they told me:“ You had the best solution in the early days, but I'm sorry, our teamwork is estimated, and you worked alone. Now, if you had a student or a girl in the team ... ”? Have you encountered such an injustice? How did you do it?



- Yes, I met more than once. I am stoistically concerned with everything that happens: I did everything in my power, if it didn’t work out - so be it.



“Why are you doing all this?”



- Everything is just out of boredom.