Introduction

This passing weekend I attended my very first in-person hackathon, GenAI Genesis, hosted at the UTSG campus. The event spanned over 36 hours beginning on Friday and I had only just gotten a team the day before. All four of us didn't know each other and did not plan ahead for anything regarding the competition.

The Team

Myself - Third year Computer Engineering @ UofT (No hackathon experience)

Saurabh - Fourth year Computer Science @ UofT (Significant hackathon experience)

Fares - Fourth year Computer Science @ UofT (Little hackathon experience)

Andrew - Second year Computer Science @ UBC (Little hackathon experience)

Our build

To learn more about our project checkout our submission on Devpost which includes a demo! ClinicEar

Reflection

Building

Friday - Brainstormed a couple of ideas based on multiple tracks (Sun Life, TD, IBM, etc.), managed to get sleep.

Saturday - Decided on an idea that involved the Sun life and IBM tracks, immediately began working. Kept working through the night (only taking a break for free stuff 😅). Did not sleep one bit...

Sunday - Recorded our demo 15 minutes before the deadline and managed to get the Devpost submission in time before 08:30. Pitched our idea for the general, Sun Life, and IBM tracks.

Disastrous Organization

1. Long lines/Rationing food: Trying to get fed in this event was brutal. It was common to have to wait for over a hour in lines and when you finally got there, things were being rationed out. Are we seriously counting the fries per person?

2. Delays, delays, delays: The event schedule was there for show. It was pushed back multiple times. The climax of this issue was the organizers cancelling round 2 of the general track pitches entirely and still managing to start the closing ceremony late.

3. Pitching: The first round pitch was chaos. Schedules were posted only 5 minutes before the first set of groups had to present. As you may expect, most did not make it there on time and everything was thrown into disarray. When we finally managed to start presenting, an organizer interrupted our pitch midway. Insanity.

Vibe coding

I know this was a hackathon specifically related to generative AI, but I'd imagine most participants don't code most of their project in other competitions as well. It's a perfect use case for AI coding tools, you're faced with a time crunch, building an ambitious project you likely don't know how to build. This is not necessarily a bad thing just something I noticed.

Moving forward

Overall, I had a good time (despite the organizing difficulties) mostly because of my team. Even though we didn't win, I learned a lot and looking forward to teaming up with them in the future.

A couple of team photographs (excuse my tired face):