SIH 2020 : A kick-start from my not-so techie life

How Smart India Hackathon (SIH) participation has helped me to strengthen my competency and enhance my skill-sets?

Hello everyone! In this blog, I'm going to talk about how SIH played an important role in building my passion towards acquiring technical skills. Do read till the end to know about all of my experiences.

Do you believe in the concept of “IDEA”?

Do you follow the principle of “Smart Work”?

Well, my SIH experience directed me towards these! I’m writing this blog to enlighten these topics and I’ll try to elaborate the importance of the above 2 questions in every engineering student’s life!

SIH kick-started my non-technical life to a much focused one.  The concept of “Smart work beats hard work” suits my story!

So, I decided to participate in SIH 2020 under the Software Problems domain. This domain asked for a Web app/ Mobile app to be made. I was eager to make a Web app as I knew Web development from basic level.

Now a team needed to be made! So I communicated with my classmates and managed to make a team of 4 members. But there was a major problem - all of them had different skill sets and none was from web development background. One of them was an Artificial Intelligence learner, one being a Photographer and other a Graphics designer. We still decided  to go for it.

Now you can imagine how tough a situation it would be! Still taking up the challenge is what life demands! It might be a big statement but holds true! We thought that we should definitely give a try as it would be a great opportunity for us to expand our skill sets.  

 The next task was to select the Problem Statement.

From the SIH Problem Statements, we decided that we would take up the topic of “Women Empowerment” and make a Web app for it.  After many discussions, agreements and disagreements over what we could do in the website, we finally decided to make a blogging and jobs-based website.

We focused on a particular category of women – “The middle class women” and our website would provide jobs to them like Work from Home jobs. We decided that there would be blogs of inspiring women of our country present in it and women who want to tell their success stories could also publish them on it. This was the wholesome idea of our website.

We had to start our work then. It was my first experience of being a Team Leader and hence I faced many problems to make the team work together.  I advised them to learn the things in parallel and apply them on the website.  

This developed problem analyzing and solving skills in me. I divided the Website creation into small parts like-  designing the web-pages and logo, writing the code, blog writing, managing the database and jobs section.

I had to work smartly to get the work done and hence used the zeal of my fellow members by assigning little tasks to them daily.

This whole scenario directed me towards the “Smart work” approach and helped me improve my skill sets in a smarter way thereby completing the Website till the SIH day.

Then came the D-day!

Morning of 17^th January, 2020 brought much hopes and determination in me and I went to my college for the much awaited event.  A day-long Hackathon was in front of us.

We went through the mentoring sessions and tried to work upon the suggestions given  by the mentors. The coordination amongst us was on peak on this day. This developed team-work skills in me.

When the judging round happened, I presented the website before the judge. I gave an overall view about how we made it and what our intention is behind the website. The judge got amazed with the logo of the website and called it as having the potential of being a “Brand logo”.

Sir appreciated our team-work and asked us to do some further improvements.

Now the best part comes!!

Sir asked us to work under him and that he would provide guidance and funds for our website to get launched in the real world. This flooded me with lots of emotions and at the end of the day there were big smiles on our faces!! After all, I was the Team Leader, hahaha!!

Our idea of a Women Empowering website which would provide jobs to middle class women with calculation of how this would bring change in their family economy worked well for us.

This made me realize the power of “IDEA”. I understood that it is the idea that matters even if you lag in knowing the technology. Technology can be learnt any time soon but idea should be powerful and stable. The power of idea is the engine that transforms the way we live and think!

Most of the times we’re just running after working hard and trying to find solutions for our problems still end up loosing. I’m not saying that it is a bad thing to work hard – for success to be achieved, there must be an element of hard work. Hard work pushes you towards the brink of success, but smart work gets you there.

These 10 days of SIH preparation developed competency in me and my team. And guess what? We’re still involved in our website work and have reached much ahead.

SIH gave me a lot more confidence in my management skills. SIH taught me the true importance of a team which is also depicted by these lines – “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”

SIH helped me conquer my Stage-Fear too. It made me realize about my speaking skills and I was able to speak and explain in English language comfortably. I realized that courage wasn’t the absence of fear but the triumph over it!

With SIH came a direction about how what my interests are and how I should move further for my career. I got to know that I like to make web-pages. While writing the Blogs, I realized that I enjoy writing very much.

SIH developed a skill of working for long hours in me which is an essential requirement by the IT sector. Now I’m able to work with more dedication and for prolonged hours. This has helped me a lot in learning my semester subjects and to make time for my other points of interest as well.

Not only me, but also my team members have started to see changes in their way of working. SIH has given me a lot more than what I’ve described. I’m grateful that I got to be a part of SIH in my 2nd year of college and looking forward to participate in more such events. I owe my current interests to SIH!

Here’s a picture of the SIH day and it always brings me power!

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SIH developed a skill of working for long hours in me which is an essential requirement by the IT sector.

Not only me, but also my team members have started to see changes in their way of working.