During my fourth year of college, I was able to serve as a Co-President of HooHacks, UVA's largest hackathon.
It was my seventh (!) hackathon that I had the pleasure of organizing, since I had joined my high school's hackathon planning team in my sophomore year. Over 740 people attended HooHacks during my fourth year, and that doesn't count my amazing team or gracious volunteers, judges, and mentors who made it all possible. It was an incredible and truly rewarding experience.
I could talk for hours and hours about hackathons, and certainly have in the past, but if I had to give only three lessons that I learned from hackathons, from being a team member to being the person guiding the event, this is what I'd say:
- The most important skill to learn as a leader is to make decisions. Deliberation and discussion is good and needed, but there are times when you don't have the time for it. As a leader, it's your responsibility to know when a decision is needed, and to make it.
- Following that, delegation is perhaps the second most important skill you can learn, since you can't do everything yourself, even if you want to.
- If you really want something to be great, you have to care more than is reasonable and be willing to put in the work, regardless of how menial it may seem.1
If you want, you can read an article that UVA wrote about the whole event!
Footnotes
- “Men did not love [HooHacks] because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.” — G.K. Chesterton
And some photos, just because:
From the opening ceremony
And from the closing ceremony
And if you've made it this far, here's a fun article about hackathon judging systems.