Smart India Hackathon (SIH) Experience - Year 2023

Hello everyone, I am an engineering student from Kolkata, India. Today I am going to share my journey and experiences as a participant in Smart India Hackathon 2023 in internal level. In 2023 I was in my first year and it was totally a new experience to me to be a face of my team. Our team had six members with 2 seniors(2nd year) and 4 were my classmates. In this post I will share my experience, the hurdles we faced and how we tried to reached to a solution.

About SIH:

SIH is a big competition run by the Indian Government. They share real-life problems, and we use our technical skills to solve them.

The Smart India Hackathon 2023 was a really cool initiative! It's super important to give students the chance to use their skills and creativity to solve real-life problems. When we encourage innovation and problem-solving, it helps not just the students but also society as a whole. Getting students to think hard and come up with practical solutions can lead to big improvements in lots of areas, making life better for everyone.

Who Can Participate?

The project we worked on:

Our project looks at how people feel about the Ministry of Commerce and Industries on social media. We used special software to collect posts from different social media (mainly from twitter/X) sites and figured out if people were saying positive or negative things. This helps the Ministry see how people view its work, policies, and announcements.

By understanding these feelings, the Ministry can see what people care about and if its messages are working. It can also respond quickly to any negative feelings. This helps the Ministry use facts to make decisions and talk better with people online.

Using sentiment analysis helps the Ministry see what the public thinks, improve how it deals with important groups, and be more open about what it does. The goal is to help the Ministry use social media well and have a better relationship with the public and important groups.

Our Journey:

Choosing a problem: First, we picked a problem that matched our skills. This was super important because it set the direction for everything else we did. Explored the problem statements page for 2-3 days and after many round of disscussions and google meets, we settled on a problem that fit our skills and interests. It was really crucial to find the right problem because it determined the path we would take in the competition.

Ideation and Preparation: We brainstormed ideas and planned how to solve the problem, discussed with our college teachers. We drew out how our solution would work, how people would use it, and what it would look like. Then, we put it all into a PowerPoint presentation.

Presentation at College Level (Internal): We presented our idea to our college. We competed with other teams, and our solution stood out. This got us noticed as one of the best teams in our college. After the presentation was done we felt really very cool and confident.

Selection for Main Event: We did really well in our college presentation, so we got chosen to go to the next level. This was a big deal because it meant our hard work paid off, and we were moving on to the next level of the competition.

Going to Main Event (External): Before the main event day, we made sure our solution was perfect. We practiced our presentation and made any necessary improvements. Continuously made little changes to our ppt, getting in touch with out mentor regularly, we prepared with our best. We were ready to face the final challenge with confidence.

Finally, despite our earnest efforts and meticulous preparation, we fell short of being selected to proceed further in the competition. Though it was disheartening, we view this as a valuable learning experience that has equipped us with insights to improve and refine our approach in future endeavors. We took motivation, return even stronger and more resilient in the next opportunity that comes our way.

Overall Steps to follow according to my experience:

• Choose a Problem: First, you need to pick a problem that matches your skills. And your team needs to have 6 members, including at least one girl.
• Prepare an Idea: Next, brainstorm ideas on how to solve the problem. Figure out the steps, how users will use it, and draw flowcharts to visualize it. And put all this into a PowerPoint presentation.
• Present in College: Then present your idea to your college. Each college can send a minimum number of teams. This is called an internal Hackathon.
• Selection for Finals: If your college selects your team, you move on to the next round organized by the SIH team or Organization. Details about this are available on the SIH website.
• Final Preparation: Get ready for the final competition, making sure you cover all the necessary points.

That's it, I hope this helps clarify things. Good Luck!