How to Win Your Next Hackathon: Interview with Visiarc’s Peter Lindgren
With Mobile World Congress right around the corner, there's no doubt that some of you have already thought about joining a hackathon or two during your time there. While coding for the sake of coding can be fun, it's probably even more fun if you win so we reached out to Peter Lindgren, CEO of VISIARC, and recent hackathon winner at last year's Nokia World:
First of all, tell us a little bit about VISIARC.
VISIARC is a mobile cloud company that specializes in mobile documents or more specifically email, attachments and documents. Traditionally, we focus on enterprise and productivity.
You recently took home first prize for your app 'Duudle' at Nokia World's Hackathon. Can you tell us a little bit about Duudle?
Duudle is a multiplayer, turn and skill based game. The game play is original in the sense that it hasn't really been done before, yet its' actually quite straight-forward. You get a word, then you get 30 seconds to 'duudle'. Your duudle is then pushed to all opponents who get notified that it's now their turn. The duudle is replayed exactly the way you drew it. All other players shall then guess the word. The faster a player guesses the right word the more points he/she gets, as well as you.
How did you approach the hackathon from a planning and strategic point of view? Did you come up with a strategy or work plan?
We planned well, but the strategy we chose was a bit nutty. First, we spent a whole lot of time thinking of what we wanted to create, drawing on the strengths of the different skills within of our hackathon team. We thought we had a pretty solid plan. Then we decided to do all this on a platform we knew pretty much nothing about before the event: Windows Phone 7. We just figured that since there were Microsoft experts on site, we would be able to quickly work around any technical problems we might have encountered.
What were your goals for the event? How did you make sure you achieved them?
Our goal was to create a multiplayer game, get it to work and fine-tune it so that it would be really fun to play. That's it. And it worked out really well, though the outlook five hours before the hackathon ended was pretty gloomy, to say the least.
What do you think were the keys to your success? What would you have done differently?
In our case, getting the gameplay to be fun and focusing on the core stuff that makes the gameplay really fluid and look sharp. Well nothing, if we'd done anything differently perhaps we wouldn't have won. (editor's note: touché!)
What are the most important things for developers entering hackathons to consider?
Have a game plan, a defined goal and a clear division of labour. Be prepared to compromise and prioritize and get the critical parts done first. At a time when you're unlikely to make anything near great decisions, that is exactly what you'll be forced to do.
Can you share some tips on what developers can do to increase their chances of winning and achieving their goals for hackathons?
Don't sleep, maximize the time and get the things done. However, be prepared to later be very unimpressed by the code quality of everything you produce after staying awake for more than 24 hours. So get the gnarly stuff done first, and save the stuff that you could do well in your sleep, because that is more or less literally what you will have to do.