Our very first Major League Hacking hackathon, we were super excited to particpate, but one of our teammates had to drop out at the last moment. We were a bit worried, but we decided to go ahead with the remaining three of us. We unfortunately messed up travel plans and expected to sleep in the flight and the car, which was a bad idea. We were super tired when we reached the venue, but we were determined to make it work.
The venue was great, a huge campus with a lot of cool posters, banners, and setup. We were quite early but they still accommodated us very well. Had breakfast, napped for a bit in the auditorium while they were setting up the stage, and then the opening ceremony happened. It was super chill, and we got to know the mentors and the problem statements.
On the Devfolio page, it said that the theme was "Open Innovation", so we expected to work with any cool project that we wanted to. So we got to work, but after a few hours when the mentors came around, they told us that we had to work on a problem statement. We were a bit disappointed, but we decided to go ahead with the one that resonated with us the most.
But we were way too tired to do much, we pretty much dozed off for the first half of the hackathon. We spent the first day just napping and eating food. Food was great though. After we napped to our heart's content, we got to work. The mentoring sessions were really helpful, and we got a lot of feedback on our project. Somehow built a working prototype by the end, but we weren't really happy with it.
It was just a lesson in travelling and planning better, and not to expect too much from ourselves when we are tired. MLH was great though, so much swag, and the food was great. Stickers, events, and a lot of fun. We didn't win anything, but we were happy with the experience.