Winning SIH 2022 (Smart India Hackathon)
As of now, I have participated in several hackathons. And we know what they are searching for in these hackathons. A simple problem that almost everyone in the community faces is the root. After realizing the problem, we think of an idea to overcome that problem in real life. But is that easy to find a solution for every problem we face? This question is a problem for every innovator itself. Many solutions may exist for a single issue. And sometimes many problems don’t have a single solution at all…
So, now is where the Innovation part kicks in. Innovating new solutions for a problem faced by many people and yourself too. If you can’t feel the problem, then it may be difficult for you to come up with a solution for that particular problem.
So I wanted to share the SIH (SMART INDIA HACKATHON) 2022 experience. The start was just simple. As we faced competition in our internal hackathon, (I guess that’s the story for another time). We need to select the problem statement and then submit the idea for the solution to that problem statement. After uploading the concept, each ministry will choose the best solution they find for the problem statement, uploaded on the SIH portal.
These are the finalist for Smart India Hackathon.
Our problem statement for the SIH GRAND FINALE 2022 was DR716.
You can check the problem statement from the official SIH website.
You can check the problem statement from the official SIH website.
Fortunately, we got selected for the SIH Grand Finale 2022. Our venue was GIET University, Gunupur, Orissa. The place is a bit away from the central city. So most of the teams went there by arriving at Rayagada. And then, the 2 hrs journey to gunupur was handled by the GIET University.
As we reached the venue. That was a different environment. There were volunteers and participants wherever you see. Then the registration part started for the finals. Every team needed to register and collect the SIH ID Card and program schedule.
The two-day program for all is a single day of 40–46 hours for the participants and volunteers. The University coordinators provided refreshments and food as per the given schedule.
25–26 August 2022
The first day started with the Inauguration program, and then all teams headed towards the Venue hall to start coding based on their ideas. There were six members in a group, and at least one must be female in each team. In our team, we divided the work such as coding for two members, Reporting for two members, and Data Collection for two members. And we were all helping each other in between.
Working in a team demands teamwork, and task distribution makes it more accessible. My team understood what it takes to be in a group. Not all members were good at programming; reporting and data collection are the same. So it turned out to be good for us. As per the idea, we were developing the application and designing the front end at the same time. As we were two developers. It didn’t take much time to deploy the base with registration on the local host. And as we were developing the backend with Django Rest Framework and the front end with Next Js. So it was independent to develop the application after we designed the data fields table to make it easy to connect after both ends get completed.
There were some mentoring and video recording sessions during the competition. Mr. PM Narendra Modi Ji addressed several participants in online video conferencing from different venues.
The mentoring session sometimes updates each team and ensures all the teams are doing well. Mentoring plays a crucial role in success. If your mentor tells you that everything is good, whatever you have done, then maybe you won’t do anything more. But our mentors told us to keep pushing hard and innovate a unique solution to a single problem from a whole bunch of problems. Sometimes we were discouraged, but still, we didn’t feel bad; we tried to read the problem statement repeatedly and then reconsider the whole workflow of the application. And at last, we developed the solution by keeping future aspects and revenue in our report and mind. We won the first prize in SIH GRAND FINALE 2022.
When the human brain is under pressure, it thinks like a survivor.
“The solution to every problem within an instant.”
Both days were like this. We almost finished our central application coding part within the first day. Every team was doing things like a pro, innovating ideas and developing a fully working application in just one or two days. Something like this only happens in Hackathons. So be competitive !!
In our final report, we wrote about the idea we worked on and the future aspect of the application. And also how we are going to make revenue from this application. Everything should be kept in mind when we participate in hackathons.
In the end, a “Good team is all we need.”
Questions to keep in mind when you participate in Hackathons:
- What is the purpose of the application?
- Who is the audience?
- How are we going to populate the application with data?
- How will the revenue be generated?
- The future aspect of the application?
Happy Reading & Learning…
