Your first hackathon: prepare well and get your project to a working demo
What to check before your first hackathon, how to choose a manageable task, divide the work and prepare your project for judging.
·6 min read·
Go into your first hackathon with a task you can finish and explain. For a beginner, a good result is concrete: your team builds a working user flow, submits the required materials on time and understands what to improve. The judges decide who wins. The scope of your project, access to your files and readiness to demonstrate it depend largely on you.
A hackathon is usually a time-limited event where participants build solutions and present the result. Requirements vary: some events expect working code; others accept research, a hardware prototype or a mockup. Preparation starts with the rules of your chosen event, rather than a list of popular technologies.
Start with the participation rules
Open the event page and save the rules. Look for requirements covering age, team composition, place of residence and attendance in person. Check the start time, the submission deadline's time zone and the presentation format. A multi-day online round and a short in-person final may have different conditions.
Write down exactly what you need to submit. A repository link, a deployed application, slides and a video each require different preparation. If the organizer expects a video, test your microphone and recording setup before the event. For a hardware project, ask about bringing equipment and the available power supply.
Ask the organizer a specific question with enough context: "We want to use a library we wrote earlier. Do we need to list it separately?" Save the answer with the rules. A verbal agreement with a volunteer may never reach the person reviewing submissions.
Set up your tools before building the solution
Before the event, install the tools you already know how to use. Check that you can sign in to your editor, repository and hosting service. Make a test screen recording, open it on another device and listen to the audio. None of this requires solving the competition task in advance.
You can practise by building a small learning project. Whether you can reuse its code at the hackathon depends on the rules. Learning a tool, preparing a template and developing the competition entry ahead of time are different activities. If the boundary is unclear, ask before starting the work.
Bring your charger and any adapters you need. For an in-person event, find out where you can rest and eat, how to reach the venue and when it closes. Do not make an unfamiliar laptop, someone else's account or temporary access to a paid service the foundation of your project.
Describe your skills honestly
"I can build two screens and connect a form to an existing API" is more useful to your team than "I'll handle the entire frontend." Explain what you have done independently, what you have followed in a tutorial and what you want to learn. This helps you choose a scope that does not rely on discovering a missing skill in the middle of the night.
A participant without programming experience can research the problem, test the interface, prepare data, record the demo or write the project description. Each task needs a result the team can check. "Helping with the product" is hard to assess; "I'll prepare five examples of user errors by lunchtime" can go into the plan.
If you are coming alone, find the team-matching channel and any meetup for prospective teammates. Introduce your skills, available time and the problem you want to work on. Do not promise to work all night just to get an invitation. Agree on realistic participation before the event rather than disappearing after the first stage.
Choose one path from problem to result
Consider a practice example: your team is building a consultation-booking tool. A complete product might include a calendar, payments, messages, reviews and user accounts. For the first demo, one path is enough: a person picks an available time, sends a request and receives a clear confirmation.
Write down that path and sketch a few screens. Then identify the riskiest part. The calendar might look simple, but your team may not know how to retrieve available time slots. Test that dependency before designing an attractive landing page.
In a Reddit discussion about a first online hackathon, a participant describes a project that the rest of the team could not run. It is one person's account, but it suggests a useful check: at least two teammates should be able to run the working version well before the presentation.
Agree on checkpoints
Replace a long feature list with a few visible results. First, the team can explain the problem. Next, the application completes the main flow using test data. Then another person checks the startup instructions, and the presenter rehearses the demo with a timer.
Give each checkpoint an owner. They do not have to do all the work themselves, but they know its status and report blockers. Keep the discussion short: what is ready, what prevents the next step and which part of the idea you should drop.
If you are behind, cut additional flows. Removing an optional filter is usually safer than skipping a link check or rehearsal. The 48-hour hackathon plan, in Russian gives a more detailed example of time allocation. Adapt its intervals to your event's schedule.
Start submitting before the final hour
Create a draft submission once you know the project's name and purpose. Update the description as you work. Devpost's project-planning guide also recommends starting with the rules and a draft entry. Check the actual fields and submission confirmation process for your hackathon.
Leave time to upload the video, process files and fix access. Open every link in a browser without signing in to your account. If the materials must remain private, test the organizer's approved access method for judges rather than making them public.
After submitting, save the confirmation. Then have a short team debrief: which step was harder than expected, what did you learn and what small project could you build again on your own? That will help at your next hackathon more than a vague promise to "prepare better next time."
For your first attempt, choose an event in the Stavleak hackathon catalog: read the participation rules and check the application deadlines.
