Some of my thoughts when watching MyGeekathon Final 2021.
1. NEVER say no enough time
For the sake of your marks, do not say you dont have enough time. All the contestants have the same amount of time and it is sufficient to build a good enough prototype / product. This line just exposed the poor time management of your team to the judges.
2. Understand clearly the judging criteria for the competition
Knowing the judging criteria can come in handy when you are deciding what information should be included in the presentation. The presentation time is often short, you want to catch judges’ attention and give them the information they want. If there is a part of the marks allocated for the code, make sure you show some of it (maybe the core parts) in your presentation.
If the judging criteria is unclear, here is some information you want to include:
- Problem to be solved
- State the problem statement clearly, be specific
- Enough data to prove the existence and negative effects of the problem.
- Solutions
- Explain your solution clearly
- Reasons of why this solution can solve the problem
- (Optional) Feedback from users / professionals
- (Optional) Future improvements
If you have a lot of data but presentation time is too short, include the strongest one in your presentation and put the rest in the slides. You might want to pull out some in the QnA section.
3. Don’t put all fancy technology
It is common to see a team to add solar panel, camera, 3d printing ideas into their project. However, sometime these only contribute to the “fanciness” rather than usefulness. Try to think more about these additions, consider the cost, the maintenance, and the safety. A great design is not full of different thing, but about simple. (cannot take away something)
4. Business model
Think about the revenue, the sustainability of the whole project. We don’t want burn money on something that looks good, but can’t sustain in the long run.