It was the Smart India hackathon during my third semester and it was a very exciting time for me since this was the first experience I had with such a significant event. In our team of five members, every one of us had something unique to bring to the table.
Being an amateur, I was made a front-end developer at the start. Though initially unsure about what lay ahead of me, I put my whole effort to it. Our initial task entailed sifting through numerous problem statements to find a few that seemed solvable. After some serious thought, we chose to improve tourism in India.
We therefore embarked on conceptualizing our solution armed with our problem statement. We all agreed that designing a web page would be an efficient way of marketing India as a tourist destination and marketing it across international boundaries. My colleagues then started working on other components besides which I worked on developing user interface because of my abilities were better than theirs.
From ideation to execution, there were lots of late-night brainstorms, intense coding marathons, and so many iterations. The friendship between us in the group never changed even after facing difficulties whereas each failure only fueled our determination to come up with a real solution that could impact meaningfully.
We were extremely anxious and enthusiastic when the time for submitting our project during the first round of evaluation came. It was an incredible excitement to pass that first test.
In that lot, we were lucky 20 teams out of over five tens to proceed to the next stage.
Nevertheless, as it dawned on us that our project was only a touch or so deep at its front end beyond anything else. Although I had created an interesting user interface, our solution did not meet these standards holistically; we dropped the ball there. But I didnât look back with regret.
For me, what mattered most was what I learned in the process. As a result of working together with experienced professionals and people who loved what they were doing, I understood how valuable teamwork is, how proper project management can be done and even leadership skills became known to me from here on. Every problem that we faced just served as an opportunity for my personal growth.
At the close of our SIH journey, I realized what resilience meant in real sense as well as determination anew. This may not have been exactly what we wanted but it was worth every bit of it in terms of experience alone. Participating in SIH has been one of the greatest things in my life and from now; I will use this knowledge towards other ventures in future.
To sum up, my maiden SIH participation did not conclude with a podium finish but it was a triumph itself. Through passion and commitment we were able to reach the overarching borders of the contest. I will forever be thankful for that.
