Devengers Hackathon 2.0 — my first Hackathon

Cliché to every first timer, I was trembling with fear on the day of my first hackathon. I had second thoughts on whether I should go or not, since I did not know what to expect. Also, even my team was not finalised yet.

The event was organised by Skillenza and sponsored by Microsoft. It was conducted on 14–15 september of 2019. The first stage was online and included a simple problem solving question in Python. Top participants of the first stage were invited to attend the Hackathon which was carried out in Microsoft office.

Though the problem statement which involved utilising AI for predicting stock prices were already given a few hours before the hackathon, most of the teams started working on it after reaching the venue. The participants were also encouraged to use Microsoft Azure for building model.

The 12 hour hackathon started at 6.00 pm, with around 200 participants, most of them working in a team of 3. The participants spirit was still high eventhough the food was not great.

The challenge was to build a model for predicting closing stock for a particular company to help intraday stock traders. Many of the prize winners used LSTM based models with accuracy above ninety percent. The judges concentrated on the user centeredness of the product and how far the product could be used in a real life scenario.

The third price was 8k rupees, with subsequent prices twice of it.

All in all, it was a good experience, though I wish the food was better!