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πŸš€ Week 36: My First Hackathon in Estonia πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ͺπŸ‘₯ Forming the Teamβš”οΈ Day 1 – Battlefield VibesπŸ“Š Day 2 – Presentation BootcampπŸ† Results🎧 Wrap-up

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πŸš€ Week 36: My First Hackathon in Estonia πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ͺ

J.Gong

2024-09-07

1.33min

πŸš€ Week 36: My First Hackathon in Estonia πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ͺ

This weekend, I joined my first hackathon in Estonia, hosted at Palo Alto Club, Telliskivi. Telliskivi is like a startup accelerator hub 🏒, full of energy and innovation. This hackathon’s goal was to support Ukraine πŸ’™πŸ’›.

πŸ‘₯ Forming the Team

I registered as an individual developer πŸ§‘β€πŸ’». Since the rules required teams of at least 3 people, I was lucky to meet two awesome Chinese founders building a startup in Estonia πŸ‡¨πŸ‡³βœ¨.

Their idea:

  • Use AI to analyze Bitcoin and detect dormant wallets πŸͺ™
  • Treat these wallets like gold reserves in banks 🏦
  • Generate interest using these coins πŸ’Ή
  • Verify ownerless accounts with the Odin protocol πŸ“‘

The technical side seemed doable. The big question πŸ€”: Can we legally use these coins?
It turns out, governments may allow it, similar to how dormant assets (like unclaimed houses) can be reclaimed after a period πŸ βš–οΈ.

βš”οΈ Day 1 – Battlefield Vibes

The first day felt like a battlefield πŸͺ–.

  • Mentors swarmed around, asking tough and sharp questions πŸ’‘
  • They were experts from different fields, super fast at spotting weaknesses ⚑
  • By afternoon, our team was exhausted 😡

Still, I joined a lecture about distributed machine learning 🧠. It’s not my field, but it was fun to learn something new.

πŸ“Š Day 2 – Presentation Bootcamp

On the second day, we wrapped up our slides πŸ“‘. Then came a fantastic mentoring session on pitching 🎀.

What I learned:

  • Start with a 15s project intro, then let a teammate repeat what they understood πŸ”„
  • Emphasize your team’s strength πŸ‘₯
  • Use body gestures, but only when necessary βœ‹
  • Keep the audience focusedβ€”don’t let them drift away πŸ‘€
  • Be friendly with the technical team 🀝

This session was gold ✨. I learned so much about how to present a startup idea effectively.

πŸ† Results

We didn’t win anything 🫠, but the top prizes were super inspiring:

  1. πŸ₯‡ YOLO for damage detection in Ukraine – strong tech + solid business plan
  2. πŸ₯ˆ Resilient info database – like Excel, but works in crises (e.g., COVID) πŸ“Š
  3. πŸ₯‰ AI chatbot for parents – helping them manage children’s emotions πŸ‘ΆπŸ’¬

Other fun ideas included:

  • A Tamagotchi-like app πŸ₯ where kids interact with a digital pet that secretly helps track emotions for parents.

🎧 Wrap-up

The hackathon was super fun πŸŽ‰, full of inspiration, teamwork, and learning.
The only downside: I lost my earphones πŸ˜­β€¦ bad news for my podcast habit.

Still, what a memorable first hackathon experience in Estonia! πŸ’™