Takeaways From My First Hackathon Experience
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About the Hackathon
Recently, I had the chance to participate in The Knowledge Society’s Global AI Hackathon, where innovators from across the world were challenged to provide high-level, quality solutions to pressing challenges by leveraging AI.
We were tasked with creating a slidedeck recommendation, a one-pager, and any mock-ups to illustrate our solution.
My Team’s Solution — Revolutionizing Personal Health
My team’s solution, Revolutionizing Personal Health, was focused on an A.I. centered, holistic approach to improve personal health.
Our central solution was a clinical diagnoses support system, which would support individuals in monitoring their personal health and sync with various medical data sources.
Through the use of supervised learning models and natural language processors (NLPs), our A.I. technology takes in various symptoms, medical data, and medical records in order to compare them to data from millions of other patients in order to output a potential diagnosis.
Why we used AI:
- Holistic — With an A.I. approach, doctors and individuals are connected with a holistic understanding of personal health, equipped with integration of a variety of data.
- Time Efficient — The A.I. can work through all the data that is fed into it within a matter of seconds, which drastically speeds up the process of diagnosing a patient.
- Personalized — The A.I can help provide doctors with more detailed diagnoses for every individual, which can help doctors form a more personalized treatment plan.
My Key Takeaways on the Experience
With this being my first Hackathon, I learned some key skills and concepts ranging from project management to providing legit recommendations which can be applied to future hackathons, as well as the professional workplace and long-term projects.
1 — Make Project Management a Top Priority from the Beginning
It quickly became clear that the logistics of project management, communication, and delegation were going to be critical to create a quality product under a specific timeline.
In order to achieve project success, teams should look to proactively utilize project management techniques that work for them and provide a layer of confidence for the long-term decision-making and work processes.
Some of these techniques include:
- Using digital media tools like Notion, Slack, and Google Calendar to organize meeting agendas, notes, and times; delegate and keep track of action items; and create demonstrable products to include in recommendations.
- Designating a Project Lead from the beginning. This can increase responsibility and logistical coordination.
- Creating a meeting system that works for the team — a combination of sync and work meetings.
2 — Create a Strong Team Culture
Team culture is central to creating sustainable relationships throughout the project, communicating with one another, and outlining goals for the project.
It is important to set the culture right from the beginning.
Here are some insights I have gained into how:
- Get to know all team members at a personal and professional level — do not stop at the surface character traits.
- Set team goals, objectives, and limits from the origins of the project: understand what the team wants to accomplish and how much time commitment there is among members.
- Set up feedback styles — be clear on how feedback and critiques may not be sugar-coated, and do not be afraid to challenge another team member’s perspective.
3 — Be Clear on Member Strengths and Weaknesses
There is nothing that can be more beneficial to a team than outlining each member’s strengths and weaknesses from the onset.
For example, when working on the hackathon, it was profoundly helpful to express which member had experience in slidedeck creation/graphic design, as well as who may have some background in artificial intelligence project-based learning and mock-ups.
When clearly laying out these strengths and weaknesses, team research and action items can be better delegated in order to enhance overall team success and the end product.
In addition, when all strengths and weaknesses are clearly expressed, the team can create overall objectives and vision aligned with member skillsets, experience, and background.
4 — Make Sure Everyone is Clear on the Problem and Solution
The biggest shortcoming of my team’s hackathon experience was a lack of depth in understanding the problem we were trying to solve, and the solution we were trying to create.
To start off, we were so caught up with the final product that we never spent the time to truly understand the problem we were trying to target. Because we never developed a clear niche issue, our final product was too scattered in trying to solve multiple issues ranging from clinical diagnoses to patient support holistic health — and leaving the end product ultimately ineffective.
In any project, make sure to spend the time to research, collect data, and genuinely understand the problem, prompt, or objective at hand. When the entire team is clear on this premise, action items and problem-solving come more naturally.
In addition, we never spent the time to form clarity around our solution: we were pre-occupied with creating the final presentation materials that our solution was largely defined by the contributions of individuals on different action items. There was no defined, detailed solution before working on the action items.
5 — Be Thorough
Finally, it is critical to be thorough and detailed with team projects and problem-solving — like that of a hackathon setting.
Companies, organizations, and initiatives are launched in the first place to solve big problems and fill a niche that is not in the market. If a hackathon product, for example, is to actually hold any significance in the grand scheme of our global market, there needs to be detail and depth in the solution.
Some select insights into how to be thorough include the following:
- Provide quantitative and qualitative support for any problem statements, solutions, and/or recommendations. It is one thing to state what can be done, and it is another thing to state what AND how something can be done.
- Do not be afraid of attaching/providing additional materials and content such as spreadsheets, mock-ups, and/or documents that can add additional perspective to the project — even if these materials are not required as a deliverable.
Brief Review
Five central strategies that should be embraced in hackathons, as well as team projects and professional work, include:
- Making project management a top priority from the onset by utilizing digital media tools, designating a project lead, and identifying beneficial strategies.
- Creating a strong team culture by getting to know all members beyond a surface level and through setting goals and limits.
- Demonstrating clarity on team strengths and weaknesses by outlining individuals skillsets and backgrounds.
- Being on the same page as related to the problem and solution at hand by making clarity of purpose a priority from the beginning.
- Illustrating thoroughness in the final product by including additional content and providing layered materials to support your recommendation.
About the Author
Hamid is a student based in Long Beach, CA. His interests lie in medicine, healthcare, biomedical engineering, and business. He strives to make a meaningful impact in the areas of clinical practice, healthcare delivery, and public health by leveraging technology and innovation.
If you’d like to connect, you can find him on LinkedIn and Medium (you’re already here!), or you can email him at hamidtorabzadeh@outlook.com.
