I've been going to hackathons for a long time, and I've seen how projects have evolved over the years. The beauty of developing technology is how easy it is nowadays to create something complex. There are millions of libraries that do almost anything you can imagine. Think of a website: Next.js + Tailwind + a component library -- coded in under an hour… or AI-generated in minutes. Speaking of AI, there are also plenty of pre-trained models online that perfectly suit your app. Take one of these models off the internet and boom your app is done. And after the advent of ChatGPT, I've seen hundreds of "ChatGPT wrappers" -- throw all your data into an LLM and it'll give you something cool.

The point is, I see a lot of projects that look impressive but don't embody something I call "The Spirit of the Hackathon". When I think of hackathons, I think of innovation, creativity, and pushing the boundaries of what's possible with technology. Sure, a computer vision model that can read facial expressions or a chatbot that can talk to you in real time is impressive-looking. But these have all been done before and, honestly, get repetitive to a seasoned hackathon judge. I will admit that these projects have won hackathons purely based on the "wow factor", but if you dig into these projects, you'll find a total lack of substance.

Encouraging Technical Creativity

The natural follow-up question is: "How do we actually encourage technical creativity?" I'm proposing a hackathon track called "The Spirit of the Hackathon." This track looks for projects that use technology in new and previously unexplored ways. These may not be the flashiest and fanciest of projects, but they'll make you stop and go "Huh, I never thought of doing that."

One notable example of this technical creativity is a project I've seen at a past hackathon. It was a simple yet unique concept: store an entire website in a QR code -- but not just the URL. This QR code contained important survival information like how to distill water and maps of the area, which could be viewed as a website when scanned. It was such a cool use of an otherwise mundane technology, yet it didn't win anything at that hackathon. I want to highlight those projects -- the ones that want to push the boundaries of what is possible and are brave enough to do so.

Another unique project is actually one that my team made this past weekend at HackUTA. We took piano videos (like the ones with falling notes) and turned them into sheet music. We all loved the idea and made a pretty functional app by the end of the weekend. Although we didn't win any prizes, I can confidently say that this was one of the most interesting projects I've worked on at a hackathon.

Looking to the future

So… what do we do now? There's no denying that winning hackathons nowadays relies pretty heavily on using libraries and pre-trained models -- I've seen it personally, over and over. However, that's not always the case. Despite the flood of OpenAI wrappers, there are still projects appearing at the top of hackathons that make me go "Huh, I could never think of that."

As an organizer, I'd love to see more tracks and challenges promoting this kind of technical creativity. It's a pretty broad track, but I believe spreading this mindset will result in a lot more unique projects. Also, when judging projects, perhaps consider adding technical creativity as one of the judging criteria. Of course, the actual business viability and presentation are still important, but the projects that are unique and creative are the ones that truly stand out and (in my opinion) should be the ones winning.

As a participant, I'd encourage you to branch out a little, get creative, see if you can take what's been made and find new uses for it. To be clear, I am not discouraging you from using libraries and pre-trained models. I can single-handedly thank React for helping me make decent-looking UIs. However, don't be afraid to do something unique. Explore areas you may never explore outside of a hackathon. Be ambitious. Be creative. After all, that's the spirit of the hackathon.