 We welcome you again to yet another episode of how to ace the hackathon. I, Arindam, on behalf of entire Smart India Hackathon team, welcome you for this interesting mastermind class. The agenda of this class is very simple, helping you decoding the basic tips for the Smart India Hackathon and what better it could be from listening to the first hand experiences from the past edition winners. So today we have with us Ms. Aditi who was a Smart India Hackathon 2022 winner. So let's welcome her. Hi Aditi. Hello. How are you? I'm fine. How does it feel to be back and associated with Smart India Hackathon? Smart India Hackathon is like a core memory of my heart and it just feels awesome every time I hear about it. Great. I'm sure it resonates with all the other alumni as well. The idea behind this talk session was to helping those students who are appearing for the first time for the Smart India Hackathon and understanding and making them well-versed with what exactly Smart India Hackathon is and helping them cracking this you know so much complicated cloud around it and listening to the past year aluminize. So Aditi if I talk about Smart India Hackathon what was the first time when you heard about it and what was your assumptions, presumptions about it and how did it gradually got cleared while you were going through different phases of it? So to be very honest when we first heard about Smart India Hackathon we did not know it would be in such a grand scale and a national level hackathon. Like I was in my first year even my first semester was not yet over when I got to know about this in college for the internal rounds of the hackathon. So we were in the very first semester and when we got to know we were also having online classes that time but for the hackathon we had to push ourselves, push our limits. We collaborated, we created team, we got to know each other like who's good and what and we created teams accordingly. We started working on the problem statement we chose and yeah it was like for first yeah it is a very dilemma like you get to know slowly that what is happening and what will be the next stage but eventually everything is very clear and everything is very exciting and I would also say suspenseful when the results are not out yet. So for me it was a lot of experience and knowledge as well. So Aditi as you just mentioned that it was the time when everything went online and it was indeed your first year, first semester indeed. So what kind of challenges was there in the terms of team formation and what tips would you like to give to the listeners right now while forming a good team? So my foremost experience about creating team was you need to be in a team with such people with whom you can collaborate and coordinate properly. Not only that about the tech skills need to be considered but you need to be cooperative, you need to coordinate amongst your members. So that is where the first thing arise. In my team all of us were friends like the first friends we had in college and that is why we coordinated, we clicked into each other, we created ideas, we collaborated on ideas and that actually helped a lot to us. So being friends and then being able to coordinate and collaborate. So that is where all the things for forming a team arise. Right, I think coordination is the key thing right here while you know forming the team along with you know of course the mentorship from the faculty, from the industry expert or any of the know-hows that you have around. So mentorship and yeah a good coordination among the team is must. So when you entered I mean the first phase that talks about the idea submission. That was the thing that you did that you think made your presentation or your idea submission are different or more worthy against your problem statement. Since I already mentioned I was in my first semester, first year, we did not go and choose a topic which will be out of limits for us to make, we chose a simple topic and something we could relate to. So we chose the topic to make an annual integrated academic calendar given by AICT, the problem statement was given by AICT which actually aimed that all the students of the Indian universities across India, they should have a common single academic calendar. So that issue was the same thing what we were facing like after the COVID era, all the colleges have their own academic schedule like usually all the colleges have their own academic schedule, but it becomes slightly difficult for the students across India to travel from places from the native towns to the states the colleges like and if they want to go to some other place during the vacations to you know pursue some other course, short course. So that becomes very difficult for them to align the time schedule with the college schedule. So our problem statement aimed to aid those problems and to have a single academic uniform calendar I would say academic calendar which would help students to plan their academic year well ahead of time for the personal growth and in the growth in the knowledge as well in the career. Alright, so Aditi, I would like to understand and even the viewers would like to understand that once you are shortlisted as one of the teams for the grand finale, what are the kind of database or what kind of repositories that one should explore or what should be the you know the flow till the grand finale to develop your prototype. Is there any particular sites or any any suggestions that you would like these participants to explore how it should be? Okay, so while we are asked to go for the idea submission and the idea presentation in that time only we are asked to submit the text tag. So when they submit the text tag that means they need to analyze through the process through the idea on what website or what application they are making. So the foremost thing I would say to go through the topics to go through the text tags mentioned like for us we created the front end using HTML, CSS and JavaScript only these and we had to go through each of them very nicely. We did not think that the backend will be in use for us a lot but since our mentors suggested and pressurized us to work on those as well so we went through PHP and MySQL so because that would have only been done in the short duration we had. So I would say to go through whatever the text that they are experiencing like whatever text that they have mentioned to go through and analyze and read to have a clear concept on that or else in the hackathon they will be there and they will be wasting the time correcting the syntax of the programming languages which is absolutely not what we want in the 36 hour duration of the hackathon. So once you entered the grand finale what before you know going to your nodal center what was your master plan or what was your strategy behind while you were there for the nodal center what was your plan for all those 36 hours did you had any pre-plans your team strategize anything what was it if you can just brief a little bit about it. We did not pre-plan much only that we had distributed the work among us like who was working on what and the collaboration was indeed the key point and we also had PPTs and PDFs made as well if at any cost if our website crashes or if you are not able to develop what we are preaching. So we had PPTs and PDFs handy so that we can present them well in time and in the order we wanted to. Next I would say since there is a 36 hour duration the first day you won't get tired and everything but there comes a certain period of the time when the team members start getting tired so that is where you need to switch need to take rest and some need to work on that code so that is where you need to coordinate and it becomes there there and then itself only you could not pre-plan these things so the most important thing is who is working on what and what needs to be prepared beforehand going to the high ground and what needs to be developed in the site. All right tell us something about your competitors I mean I hope there were couple of more teams for every problem statement so how was the experience when you are actually setting live with all the competitors around how was the experience? There were five teams in the finals in our problem statement and we were the junior most amongst them so when we went there we started to fear like there was a big fear that are we even going to level to them so that is where first we got a little step back but then that was the motivation that drove us like throughout the hackathon we saw what they were doing like obviously we cannot see in details but during the evaluation rounds we can analyze what are they what are they doing what have they done what are what is their approach our key point was all the seniors and all the participants and the competitors we had they actually developed something very nice like the UI and the backend it was also nice but what our highlight was what our mentors and evaluators wanted us to do wanted the additions we were able to do that some of the team members like the other competitors they were not able to do the things they were asked to on the on-site but we were able to do it so that was the most highlight point and we also see our sort teams who had two type of different backends two type of user interfaces we had no idea about how to even make those in the first year of our college but what we knew what our concept so we were very clear on that so that helped us so we were focusing on what the mentors and evaluators on the site were telling us to do yeah so as you heard it right it's not about just the experience but yes your presence of mind at that very point try to build up with a solution where it actually matches the problem statement if you are able to get what exactly is being asked for then even if you have you know expertise and senior people competing with you you can make it through so yeah so Aditi any fond memories of smart India hackathon one memory that you will remember for the lifetime except winning the first prize of course except winning the first prize yes since our college was on a semester break that time when the actual finals happened we had to go to Chandigarh University so people from all the states across we had to come together to Ganeshwar and then we had to leave from here some joint on the way on the train and yeah we had to go three days straight on train just to go to Chandigarh University and then back again three days we did not have time to roam around the city but the travel and the group travel the journey the you know what like we had to face some issues as well we had to stay overnight in the station waiting for the next train to arrive and then go those little little issues and problems those are all fond memories for the hackathon I can never forget such an exciting journey with all of my friends today I'm sure that makes you a more experienced person you know facing all these kind of things of course a learning lesson different kind of learning lessons of course that could be the fondest of all so to end up to conclude it any three pointers that you would like to straight give it to the first timers to crack the smart in the hackathon what would it be okay so I would say the participants should not focus on winning they should focus on approaching the problem statement they have chosen not only just they have to win the hackathon they have to actually come up with a solution that will be really helpful and if they focus on that then winning is like just just a step forward and I would say to focus on coordination and collaboration not only just taking ideas from each other but actually implementing the ideas they shared they should focus on what their mentors and their evaluators are doing because since they are a lot experienced than us and when they say something it actually helps a lot because even in our website we were lacking a nice landing page and when we were asked to do that and we could do that I had seen the emotions of the evaluators even they were happy for us for being able to do all of it they wanted to people were presenting in PPDs and PDAs and that that is not a problem at every case but it is better if you can implement their ideas and your own ideas on the prototype you are developing so that will be the most important points I would say from my side it was great listening to you Aditi and hope to see you again in our future editions and all the very best for your all the future endeavors thank you so much for taking out your time and helping the first timers thank you so much thank you so friends that was Aditi for you and now sharing her wonderful experience for smart India hackathon I'm sure you've learned a lot and definitely you would implement in your coming stages till then have a great day and stay tuned for more such videos thank you good day