My first hackathon
I joined my first hackathon, hosted by AngelHack at MasterCard’s in Hong Kong, in March 2015.
This event attracted around 150 participants from both local and overseas locations. The maximum team size was five persons, so there could be over 50 teams. The event started at 9 am, but teams from overseas began lining up as early as 7:30 am because the first six teams in line would get their own team room for the event.
Participants were free to join the event as individuals and attempt to form or join a team on that day.
What is hackathon?
One of my teammates had participated in several hackathons, and she told me that a hackathon is an event where you use your programming and analytical skills to solve a specific problem during the event. An example would be developing an algorithm to solve a Sudoku puzzle with minimal code statements.
The Mastercode hackathon was somewhat different from others. The Mastercard API has been open to the public for years, allowing every team to take advantage of brainstorming their idea or even starting development before the event started. The goal was to develop a business and a demo using the Mastercard API. Unlike other hackathons, the demo does not need to be completed by the end of the event, so technical skills were not as important as business ideas and graphic design in this hackathon.
Joining as an individual
Individuals can give a pitch about their idea or skill, and try to form or join a team on the first day morning for this event. However, not many participants gave their pitch, and none of them introduced themselves as many teams had already formed before the event started. Once a new team is formed, they need to brainstorm an idea. Therefore, joining as an individual would have a great advantage, as they would face difficulties in finding team members and would need to spend valuable time on pitching and brainstorming before starting work. On the other hand, you can make a new friend and enjoy the process of working closely with a team.
A brief presentation about Mastercard’s API was given to those who didn’t read the documentation in the morning. The host announced that there is a ‘secret’ API from the public API, which wasn’t actually secret at all. To do well in the event, it’s essential to be well-prepared if you want to win.
My team
As you may have noticed, our team has a female member, who is a young designer from Toronto, Canada. The other team members are developers. We are a team dominated by IT professionals, with a focus on delivery rather than creativity.
Judging from 2 minutes pitch
Every team demonstrates their product within a 2-minute presentation in front of five judges. The judges then have one minute to raise questions to the team. It seems to me that most judges have very little idea about Mastercard’s APIs. They can only ask common and simple questions such as ‘How many Mastercard APIs have you used?’, ‘What is the business model?’ Sometimes, the judges don’t even have any questions. It would be better if the judges had a deeper understanding of the API, allowing them to critically evaluate the project’s feasibility.
http://angelhack.com/masteryourcard-masters-of-code-hong-kong
If you want to test whether you have the ability to start a startup, you should join the event.
Merchcircle is the product we developed on that day.
You can learn more at #mastersofcode.