More Than Just a Hackathon
Organising a hackathon looks exciting from the outside. You see the problem statements, registrations, projects, presentations, prizes, and the final celebration.
But behind all of that is a completely different story.
HackVerse '26, organised by CodeBreakers, GCE Kalahandi, was one of the biggest events I have been involved in. My role was not limited to a single responsibility. I worked across event coordination, management, and technical development, which gave me the opportunity to experience what it actually takes to build and run a large-scale student hackathon.
I was part of the Organising Team as a Coordinator, worked closely with the Management Team, and also served as the Development Head.
🔗 Official HackVerse '26 Website: https://hackverse.codebreakersgcek.tech/
This is the story of what happened behind the scenes.
My Three Core Responsibilities
My involvement in HackVerse '26 can broadly be divided into three areas.
1. Organising Team Coordinator
As an organising team coordinator, my responsibility was to make sure different teams stayed aligned and that planned activities actually moved forward.
This involved:
- Coordinating between different organising teams.
- Following up on assigned responsibilities and deadlines.
- Helping resolve issues during registrations and evaluation rounds.
- Communicating important updates to participants and team members.
- Supporting the planning and execution of different event activities.
- Making sure information reached the right people at the right time.
A lot of this work happened quietly in the background. There were countless small decisions, follow-ups, corrections, and last-minute changes that were necessary to keep everything running.
2. Management Team
Along with coordination, I was also involved with the management side of HackVerse '26.
This meant looking at the event from a broader perspective rather than focusing only on individual tasks.
We had to think about things such as:
- Registration management
- Participant communication
- Team and volunteer coordination
- Scheduling
- Evaluation rounds
- Jury coordination
- Documentation
- Event logistics
- Problem statement management
- Handling unexpected situations
One important lesson I learned was that event management is mostly about anticipating problems before they become visible problems.
A schedule may look perfect on paper, but once hundreds of participants, organisers, mentors, and jurors are involved, things rarely go exactly according to plan.
3. Development Head: Building the Technical Backbone
The third and probably the most technically demanding part of my role was serving as the Development Head.
HackVerse needed more than a landing page. We had to build and maintain the technical infrastructure that supported the entire event workflow.
This included working on:
- Hackathon website
- Registration workflows
- Problem statement management
- Participant and team data
- Forms and submissions
- Payment-related workflows
- Communication-related systems
- Evaluation processes
- Administrative interfaces
- Deployment and production fixes
The development work required constant coordination with the organising and management teams because the requirements were continuously changing.
A small change in the event process could result in a change in the application.
That meant development was not simply:
"Build the website → Deploy → Done."
It was more like:
Requirement → Development → Testing → Feedback → Change → Deployment → Monitoring → Fix
and sometimes the entire cycle happened within a few hours.
Building While Managing
One of the most challenging parts of HackVerse '26 was balancing technical development with event management.
There were times when I was working on a production issue while also coordinating an organising task.
At other times, a change in the event process required an immediate change in the website.
This taught me an important lesson:
Technology for an event is not built in isolation. It has to evolve with the people and processes using it.
The development team had to stay closely connected with the people handling registrations, communications, evaluations, and management.
That coordination was just as important as writing the code itself.
Managing the Online Screening & Evaluation
The evaluation rounds were another major responsibility.
We had to coordinate:
- Team schedules
- Evaluation slots
- Jury members
- Meeting links
- Participant communication
- Presentation timings
- Prototype demonstrations
- Attendance and tracking
- Rescheduling requests
With multiple teams participating, even a small scheduling issue could affect several other teams.
We therefore had to maintain a structured process while still being flexible enough to handle genuine problems.
This was one of the areas where I learned the importance of clear communication and contingency planning.
The Technical Challenges
Like every real project, HackVerse did not run without technical problems.
We faced issues related to:
- Production deployments
- Domain configuration
- Payment gateway integration
- Database migration
- Form workflows
- Authentication
- Changing requirements
- Data consistency
- Last-minute updates
- Production bugs
One of the major technical decisions during the project was moving our backend data infrastructure from Neon PostgreSQL to Supabase, particularly because of the need for realtime capabilities and better integration with the event workflow.
Working through these problems was valuable because the consequences were real. A bug in a personal project is one thing. A bug in a system being used by hackathon participants is completely different.
It taught me to think more carefully about testing, monitoring, rollback strategies, and production reliability.
Working With the Team
HackVerse was never an individual effort.
Even though I had responsibilities across organising, management, and development, the event depended on collaboration between many people.
There were organisers handling communication, registration, design, sponsorship, logistics, participant support, evaluation, and technical operations.
My role often required connecting these different areas.
A requirement from the management team could become a development task.
A development limitation could affect event planning.
A scheduling change could require a communication update.
That constant interaction gave me a much better understanding of cross-functional teamwork.
What I Learned From HackVerse '26
The biggest takeaway from HackVerse was that organising a large event is very different from participating in one.
As a participant, you mostly see the final experience.
As an organiser, you see everything behind it.
I learned how important it is to:
- Communicate clearly.
- Document important decisions.
- Keep responsibilities clearly assigned.
- Build systems that can handle change.
- Have backup plans.
- Test before going live.
- Stay calm when things go wrong.
- Trust the team and delegate effectively.
Most importantly, I learned that leadership is not about doing everything yourself.
It is about making sure the right people have the right information, resources, and direction to do their work effectively.
From Code to Coordination
HackVerse '26 gave me an opportunity to combine two areas that I enjoy:
Technology and Leadership.
As Development Head, I worked with code, architecture, databases, deployments, and production systems.
As an Organising Team Coordinator and part of the Management Team, I worked with people, planning, communication, coordination, and decision-making.
Bringing these two sides together was probably the most valuable part of the entire experience.
Looking Back
HackVerse '26 was not just another event on my calendar.
It was a real-world experience in building, managing, coordinating, troubleshooting, and leading.
There were long working sessions, unexpected problems, last-minute changes, technical bugs, scheduling challenges, and plenty of discussions.
But there were also moments where we saw everything come together.
From building the technical infrastructure to coordinating teams and helping execute the event, every responsibility added something to my experience.
I am proud to have been part of the team behind HackVerse '26, and even more grateful for everything the process taught me.
You can explore the complete event, problem statements, registration workflow, and other information on the official HackVerse '26 website.
The hackathon may be about building projects, but organising one teaches you how to build people, processes, and systems too.
