Here is the number one reason people don't win hackathons (even if they have an amazing creation) - they suck at explaining. I was at one recently where a guy

Here is the number one reason people don't win hackathons (even if they have an amazing creation) - they suck at explaining. I was at one recently where a guy showed off what promised to be a very interesting way of analysing data. He spent his 5 minute demo slot talking about how he rewrote a webserver in "Go"... I mean, ok, from a geek point of view it's kind of interesting that he wrote an amazing server but a) this wasn't a server hackathon and b) he couldn't explain his way out of a wet paper bag. At the last hackathon I went to, one losing team spent their slot arguing about why they couldn't connect their Macbook to the 800*600 projector used for demoing. Ok, we all experience technical difficulties, but this team had sat through 30 minutes of presentations and at no point thought "Hey, we'd better make sure we don't waste time like these other teams - let me quickly Google how to set my external screen resolution." Honestly, the biggest thing standing between you and victory is (probably) your inability to succinctly explain your idea in such a way that you will captivate the judges.