Once a Hackathon Participant, Now a Judge

Over the past several years, I’ve had a chance to participate in various hackathons. But it wasn’t until few months back that I got to experience a hackathon from the other side, as a judge.
The event was India wide Hackathon REVA HACK organized by Google Developer Students Club of REVA University. There were many sponsors for the Hackathon.
I was invited by REVA university to Judge a Hackathon, I was excited and was looking forward to watching participants create interesting projects from scratch, then present them to us.

There were total 3 Judging Rounds. The criteria for judging is based on functionality, design, creativity and execution.
There were so many interesting ideas – from apps that helped to detect skin cancer to apps that made loan process easy to others which helped in securing your desktop files and many more innovative projects were developed.

Being part of the Hackathon Discord group was a great experience. All the teams worked hard throughout the Hackathon, mentors were very helpful and by seeing the Discord Community chats it seemed that the Speaker sessions were very helpful for participants.

There were different Tracks in the Hackathon like Healthcare, Cloud Computing, AI & ML,etc.
There were 10 winners in total. There were Cash prizes and goodies for the winners. Cash prizes for tracks. Certificate for all the participants.

Being a judge, and watching the process from a different perspective was fun and inspiring. It was an honor to see the great ideas and meet the teams who developed them.

The Winners were the teams who exceeded expectations. They did things that were more than required. 
The experience, creativity and execution of the builders are the key factors for success. These factors set apart competing teams. The ones who did well had a clear well thought out plan for execution. They were calm under pressure and they were having fun.

REVA Hack was very well run, and I am willing to support well run hackathons because I think it’s an important way for developers & students to develop real programming skills.

Speaker at Hack Gujarat & Microsoft Inspire

Speaker at Hack Gujarat & Microsoft Inspire.

In this session I talked about how Slack & GitHub are excellent collaborative Platforms for Hackathons and how it can help hackathon participants to collaborate, build and work remotely. I also talked about how Twilio can be used for developing a Collaborative Platform.

I came to know that Hackathon Organizers got inspired by my talk & have created a Slack Workspace for Hackathon and are organizing the complete mentoring, communication & collaboration part of Hackathon using Slack.
Some interesting statistics : In just 3 days there are 350+ participants using Slack Workspace at their Hackathon.

Power of Personal Growth in Communities at TEDxpress

I had a wonderful time being a Speaker at TEDxpress- Ideas Empowered.
I talked about Power of Personal Growth in Communities.
Received amazing feedback after the talk. Enjoyed sharing my experiences and how community helps an individual improve soft skills, communication & growing personal & professional brands.

Featured in Slack Frontiers Conference

Excited to share that I was featured as Chapter Leader of Slack Community Pune during amazing Slack Frontiers Conference 

Featured in Keynote video of CMX Summit – the biggest gathering of Community Professionals

Excited to share that I am featured in the Keynote video of CMX Summit – the biggest gathering of Community Professionals ! Truly an honor to be featured along with Founder of CMX

Judge at India wide Hackathon

I had an amazing time judging the India wide Hackathon -REVA HACK. All the teams took lot of efforts to develop creative & useful apps.
Thanks a lot REVA HACK for inviting me as a judge to such a wonderful hackathon.
Kudos to all the efforts of team REVA HACK in organizing India wide Hackathon.

Building apps with Slack – Slack Community Event

Hosted another amazing Slack Community Event. Event was all about Building Apps with Slack. Our wonderful event speaker from Slack gave us the demo on how to create a Slack apps and best practices one must follow while planning & developing a Slack app.
After the Q&A round we received lots of good reviews.
Overall the event went really well & we had lots of fun ! Challenge of running virtual events are totally different from in-person ones.

Q&A Session

Promotional Interview for DevRel Asia- Asia’s Largest DevRel Conference

Had a wonderful time interviewing for DevRel Asia Conference. Discussed about my talk & developer communities.
Thanks a lot DevRel Asia for having me.

Honored to receive 3 Rotaract International Awards

Honored & Grateful to receive the most awaited & most prestigious Award of Rotaract International District :
1. Best Council – Male
Excellence Recognition as
2. District Professional Development Director &
3. District Professional Assistance Officer

Speaker at Mumbai University for Short Term Training Program

I had a wonderful time being a Speaker at Mumbai University for a Short Term Training Program on Career & Entrepreneurship Opportunities in Information Technology Post Covid-19.