Have a good meal and some sleep
That seems to be obvious for many people, but well rested and not hungry people just are thinking faster. Take an advantage of that and never go to events like that after all night up. The good practice is to prepare yourself something to eat. Fast foods are full of fats and sugar that won’t help on the long run. I strongly encourage you to pick some healthy snacks.
Do a research before head
Most of the hackathons are releasing the topic or theme few days before the event. If you want to show your best performance you have to do some kind of a research and prepare yourself the best possible. For example, if the hackathon is sponsored by some data company you have a grounds to believe, that whole topic will be around working with big sets of data. Now the best you can do is to study company products and technology to have an advantage over your opponents.
Know what you want to achieve
If your goal is to win a hackathon, you should do everything that’s humanly possible to do so. Before you start preparing yourself set a goals. That way you won’t be distracted. Trying to learn new technology or language? Or maybe expanding your CV is not as easy as it seems? Ask yourself why are you doing what you are trying to do, and things will get much smoother.
Gather your team
You won’t be able to do anything alone. Programming and developing is a team effort, and you know it. It’s much better to participate in competition with group of people who you like and know how to work with. Know their strengths and weaknesses. So whenever the rules allows you to, don’t go alone ???? It’s more fun to go with friends.
Do your homework
Don’t be that person, who didn’t bring anything to the event. Make list of everything that you need, everything that seems important. This includes hotel booking, traveling tickets, cables and so on. As I said before, don’t forgot about food.
Behave yourself
Teams win hackathons – not individuals. You’ll be working very closely with these people for several hours, so it’s important to be someone that people actually want to work with. Be respectful to others, even if you disagree with their ideas. No matter how much you want to win, make sure you’re considerate of your teammates. Remember, it’s just a hackathon – it’s not life or death. Enjoy the challenge and have fun!
