A hackathon is another form of self selection, much like going to a club where any guy needs to buy a bottle to get in. The bottle in this case is willingness t

A hackathon is another form of self selection, much like going to a club where any guy needs to buy a bottle to get in. The bottle in this case is willingness to spend your free weekend on coding up some random project. Usually the participants like programming, have an idea, or just like socializing with other coders. You can find hackathons through websites, meetups, friends. These two websites are pretty helpful: http://hackathon.io/ http://hackathon.io/ https://www.hackerleague.org/ https://www.hackerleague.org/ While I have only participated in 1 event, it seems like the winning teams are ones with good idea, decent presentation skills and come prepared to execute. Ones that work well with each other, have a solid idea, done some fundamental ground work like looking through the APIs to see what kind of data and queries you can do, manipulating JSON, bootstrap, and basic teamwork stuff (github push / pull / merging), etc. You meet all sorts of people at these things, and exposes you to more randomness. If you haven't done one, book a weekend and try it. And please take care of your self with healthy food and a decent night's sleep.