At the beginning of 2021, I started my developer journey, meeting with such amazing people virtually was by no chance by getting involved and active in the tech communities during pandemics. In the meantime, building skills and collaborating with different people around the world makes me more inclined to tech communities and software products.

🚀Leveling up with the Hackathons

Hacking in the hackathons and working on the different projects hacks amazed me to love hackathons by Major League Hacking. Attended the very first hackathon virtually with my team involving @Yash Sehgal, and @Tanisha Jain ranked in the top 11 in the Abracadabra Hacks by MLH. In the initial days of programming, I was a noob, Yash mentored us and we build the amazing hack project in the last minute of the submission period, but we lagged with the submission of the project, though we did a lot of hard work that symbolized us rude and mute.

After some time, I connected with one of the MLH coaches and had a great conversation with him. With all the efforts and conversations with Stephen from MLH turned our project into the top-ranked list. At this incredible stage, we are so happy that we finally submitted it and the struggle pays it off.

🗣️Diving Deep into the Communities

Participating in several hackathons and open-source contribution programs made me so consistent within the open-source and tech communities to build something. In mid-2021, mentored many people related to technology, took sessions, and get involved in many communities by leveling up personal branding. These results made me shine as a Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador. A community leader building various open source and tech communities.

🎯The journey to HackCon India

Getting so curious to attend my very first tech conference by Major League Hacking Community in Delhi. It’s the first HackCon conference in India organized by MLH. The way to Delhi with my friend Yash Sehgal was really exciting and my first experience in a metro.

Before the conference, we are full of pre-planned todos. We have visited and explored so many beautiful places like Jantar Mantar, Rajghat, Cannaught Place, Agrasen ki Baoli, etc.

On the second day, when arriving back at the hotel due to heavy rain, all around us was full of water and the auto-rickshaw gas was going to be empty soon. After some time, we lost the route to the hotel, this moment made us frightened and it was hard to find the route due to the heavy rain. Finally, we struggled to find the way and reached to hotel.

🤩It’s the HackCon day

Finally, the wait is over, and heading toward attending HackCon was a full of exciting journey so far. Got to know about so many folks out there and met different people, what they’re doing and hacking these days, taking selfies with the people around us, meeting with the community leaders, GitHub Campus Experts, and to whom I interacted virtually get connected in real life.

Let's go a bit back on how I ended up attending HackCon India. Being joined by around 200 hackers/organizers HackCon started around 8 am with the Keynote session by Mike Swift (CEO of MLH) followed by many other community leaders/builders and hackathon organizers.

GitHub Education being the sponsor of the event conducted various interesting activities and giveaway cool swags, involving polaroid photos, developer badges, stickers, etc.

🤝Network - Inspire - Collaborate

At HackCon, my curiosity level and the way of talking with the folks out there amazed me, and the accent while having the conversation is so fantastic. The conference made me in that state in which my energy for networking with people, learning something new from them, and deeper talks on developer terminology, being a community leader how to lead the community, various techniques and ways to organize hackathons in a pre-planned timeline for a successful event, and learned about different technologies and companies.

There were amazing workshops by great leaders and planned breakout time to interact with the attendees. This conference inspired me to attend various conferences/events, community building, and keep hacking at amazing hackathons.

Last but not the least, could not express more about the learnings in words, I learned a lot of things.

💡 The best way to get help is to make it easier for people to help you.

Happy Hacking💜

Ayush Soni