Many people find that working together creates better results than working solo, especially when innovating new ways to use technology and protect it from potential vulnerabilities. Hackathons offer the chance for people in the same industry to come together and learn from each other’s successes and failures. Professionals get to meet and collaborate, solve problems, share skills and help build better products.
Have you been thinking about checking one out? Here are five reasons you should attend a hackathon:
1. Showcase Your Skills
While hackathons are a great a way for everyone to meet and collaborate with others in their field of expertise, there’s also a competitive side. Hackathons challenge attendees to exhibit their ability to innovate and create compelling, real-world solutions, utilizing the latest devices and technology. It’s also a chance to demonstrate specific skills that you aren’t able to showcase elsewhere.
2. Learn About Tech
One of the biggest benefits of attending a hackathon is learning new skills and attaining new knowledge. According to coding society Hackerstolz, you might gain more knowledge than you would in six months, due to the learning-by-doing approach employed at hackathons. You can also soak up information from fellow attendees — including ideas you may never have gained in the classroom or from a book.
3. Share Your Ideas
At its heart, a hackathon is a deeply collaborative effort. To get the most out of these events, attendees need to be willing to share their expertise with others, ensuring that everyone learns from everyone else. For example, experts in security can learn from designers about how to better implement their features and app designers can learn how to better protect personal information. Hardware and software specialists can better learn how to work with each others’ tools — everyone learns something new.
4. Challenge Yourself
It can be very easy to remain in your comfort zone, doing things you know how to do and never really challenging yourself. At hackathons, there is no such safe space. You will be constantly challenged to push yourself and move outside your comfort zone.
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From working as part of a team of people who you don’t know, to doing things that you never even thought you’d try, hackathons are a great way to discover new talents, passions and skills.
5. Collaborate Under Pressure
It may not sound like a selling point, but experiencing the pressure of having to come together with people you don’t know and create something entirely new in a very short space of time can be hugely rewarding. You don’t simply get a sense of achievement from completing the task — you also learn how to work efficiently, how to work as a team and how you can put your skills to work in a quick-turn environment.
A Chance to Showcase Your Skills
Now that you’re familiar with these benefits, hackers, developers, designers, and engineers are invited to the Samsung Galaxy Note8 Hackathon in Mountain View, California, from November 4 to 5.
The event will see teams challenged to create new products which will be judged in a variety of categories, including most viable B2B solution, most original/inventive UX/UI, best use of the Samsung ecosystem and most innovative implementation.
The winners of Best in Show will receive a prize that includes a trip for up to four of its team members to New York; the option to attend a week-long intensive at Samsung NEXT to take their idea to the next level as well as meeting key Samsung executives.
Ultimately, this event is designed to give engineers, developers, and designers an exclusive hands-on look at the latest Samsung developer tools for creating innovative mobile security solutions.
Hackers, developers, engineers and designers are invited to attend the Samsung Galaxy Note8 Hackathon. While registration has closed, a waitlist and potential on-site registration is available for those interested.
