Don't Blame The Organizers

For the past two days, I have participated in HackSRM. According to me, I worked hard for the project and literally stayed awake two nights to finish it. The project was emotionally attached. I am quite sure, the same thing happened to most other participants. We eagerly waited for the list of the finalists to come out yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, my team didn't qualify to the finals. To be honest, I didn't even expect because I am still a fresher and am inexperienced. I just went there to learn. However, most other teams had different opinions. Some said, the event was biased. Some even pointed out that the qualified teams were using older projects. Some claimed that their project was way better than those of the finalists. Obviously everyone gets emotionally attached to the project because they worked hard for about two days.

I waited to see the pitches of the finalists. I felt, "Maybe it was biased but the projects have to be good. I can at least instead of blaming the organizers." When the four-hour pitching session ended, I went through the projects of the finalists that were pushed to production and I felt that those projects were literally outstanding. Again, I am no expert. I am just a fresher with no prior knowledge. Technically it was my third hackathon but frankly speaking, it was the first one that I attended like a contestant. My first hackathon was VITHack, organized by VIT Vellore. My team seriously lacked ideas and skills in that so we couldn't participate well. My second hackathon was IdeaOryx. It was an intra-college hackathon organized by Open Source Club (OSC), VIT-AP. In that, the number of participating teams were considerably less so I didn't have the feel of participating in a hackathon.

Coming back to the point, the finalist projects were literally very good and deserved it. Yet, some of my fellow contestants claimed their ones were better. Last night, I went through most of the submissions. I agree there were some duplicate submission and some participants reused their earlier hacks. Even then, they had considerably updated their earlier hacks and thus followed the rules of the hackathon. Yeah, some projects were better than those of the finalists (completely my personal opinion) but they didn't have proper business model and all needed for a hackathon. It was a better 'Project' but not a better 'Hack'.

At the end of the day, after going through most of the submissions and their repositories, my faith on the Organizers and Judges were restored. Their decision was perfect without any bias. Their only bias was how good the hack is, and I respect their decisions.

Last night, I apologized to the organizers, "Sorry for fighting and blaming. After watching all the pitches, I believe, these projects were the best ones out there. I respect your decisions," and they said some very valuable words, "Admitting mistakes is not a sign of weakness but a sign of maturity." I completely agree with them. One of them said, my hack was good and gave them a tough time deciding the top 10. I thank them again.

Maybe, I couldn't pitch my idea there but it was a great learning experience. Honestly speaking, even if I were able to pitch my idea, I couldn't have competed with the others. My project was a 'Project,' not a 'Hack'. My team and I didn't think about the business model and all and maybe I deserved this.

At the end of the day, I returned with some knowledge for my next hackathon and had a good time participating. Thank you organizers for the experience.