I’ve joined a few AI hackathons by now, but at the very beginning, it really started with:
“What even is a hackathon?”
I didn’t even know the word.
When I first heard “hackathon,” I had no idea what kind of event it was.
Do you program?
Do you build something?
Is it a team competition?
A contest?
How does the day go?
That was my level.
But I had just started using AI around that time, and I thought:
“I don’t really get it, but I feel like I should go to this.”
So I decided to give it a try.
The event I went to was a hackathon called AIAU Craft Day.
Winning a prize? No, I wasn’t even at that point yet (haha)
Of course, I had zero intention of thinking,
“I want to win!”
Honestly, that was completely out of the question (haha).
I didn’t even know what we were going to do.
I’m not an engineer, and I had only just started using AI.
So my mindset was something like:
“I know I don’t really belong here. Sorry…”
But then I saw where it was being held:
Roppongi Hills.
It was close.
I knew where it was.
And I kind of wanted to go there anyway.
So I thought:
“Worst case, it’s fine if I can’t keep up at all.”
Even if I couldn’t fit in with anyone and ended up thinking,
“Ugh, I shouldn’t have come…”
I decided I would be happy with just
having seen an AI event at Roppongi Hills.
That’s how low I set the bar before signing up.
I thought someone would come with me. Nobody did (haha)
When I heard about this hackathon, there were five or six people around me.
So I had a vague feeling that
“At least one of them will probably come with me.”
But nobody came (haha).
Oh well.
I found out about the event on a Sunday, and the hackathon started that Friday.
It was announced on connpass.
It was very last-minute.
Even I was like,
“Wait, it’s already this week!”
and rushed to sign up just in time.
In the end, I went alone.
Around noon on the day, team building suddenly began
Once I had signed up, Discord was used for communication and for running the event on the day.
The event itself started with check-in at around 18:30, but around noon that day, a shared slide deck was opened for participants.
People who wanted to form a team would introduce themselves there.
That was how it worked.
Here too, I was like:
“Wait, we’re already making teams?”
But I gave it my best.
There were about 60–70 participants, if I remember correctly.
When I looked, fewer than ten of them had posted that they were looking for teammates.
Maybe a few more had posted by just before the event, but even so, not everyone was actively writing something.
On the slides, I wrote things like:
- what I wanted to do
- what skills I had
- what my current situation was
- what kind of work I did
- what kind of people I wanted to team up with
I didn’t just use text — I used images to show who I was, too.
New to AI.
First hackathon.
But for now, I wanted to at least put out there:
“Hey, I’m here!”
I took the mic at the venue and introduced myself
Then I headed to the venue at Roppongi Hills.
The venue was Mercari’s headquarters in Roppongi Hills.
They also provided lots of Starbucks coffee for us.
After all the explanations, there was time for anyone who wanted — like people looking to form a team — to introduce themselves in front of everyone.
And yes,
I did this too.
At my first hackathon, without really understanding anything, I took the mic (haha).
I talked about myself and said that
I wanted people to join me as teammates.
And I also said:
“If nobody comes, please let me join one of your teams.”
There was no point trying to look cool.
I didn’t understand anything, so the only thing I could say was:
“Someone please work with me.” (haha)
But looking back, I think it was good that I took action right from the start.
When I went, there were more kinds of people than I expected
Of course, there were people at the venue who looked like they had seriously strong technical skills.
People who wanted to win at hackathons and use that track record in their careers.
People who came because they wanted to actually try new AI services.
There was also someone who worked on AI-related things at their company and said:
“I’m trying out various services to decide which AI to bring into my department.”
And there were people who had joined many times simply because
“hackathons are fun.”
People’s reasons for being there were more varied than I had imagined.
I found that part really interesting too.
We also talked about which AI tools we normally use.
More people were using Claude than I expected.
One person said they were using Claude Fable, which made me think:
some people are spending quite a lot on AI tools.
I use Claude Code too, and I like Claude Haiku.
I like that I can use it without worrying too much about running out, so I told people:
“I’m Team Haiku.”
Being a non-engineer didn’t mean I couldn’t do anything
When you hear “hackathon,” it’s easy to imagine that
the people who can write code are the main characters.
Of course, since you’re actually building a product, people with technical skills are incredibly important.
But once I worked in a team, I realized that code isn’t the only thing you need.
What are we making?
Who will use it?
What problem does it solve?
Is it really necessary?
How do we show it?
What do we present at the end?
All of this is needed too.
At this hackathon, Devin and Supabase were the sponsors, and we actually used both of them to build our project.
It felt like the focus wasn’t just on building something, but also on how well you made use of what each of those tools could do.
I’m not an engineer, so there were tons of technical things I didn’t understand.
But we could still think things through together, like:
“What should we do about this?”
“Wouldn’t this be more interesting?”
“Who would use that?”
That’s when I realized for the first time:
“Oh, it’s not like I can’t do anything at all.”
Of course, there are also people who are seriously good (haha)
I want to be clear about this part.
Just because beginners can join doesn’t mean it’s
a gentle world full of beginners (haha).
There are definitely amazing people.
Some people build incredibly fast,
and some projects make you think,
“Wait, they made that in such a short time?”
But to me, that’s actually what makes hackathons interesting.
There’s a deadline.
There’s judging.
There are prizes.
Some people are seriously aiming to win.
I also heard that some people who are really going for the win don’t go home from the second day to the third day and just keep building.
At a previous event, apparently someone used a nearby Saizeriya restaurant to keep working through the night.
They told me it was easy to stay there for a long time, the seats were relatively spacious, and you could use power outlets and Wi-Fi, so it was convenient.
As a first-timer, I was surprised:
“Wait, people go that far?”
So there’s a real sense of tension.
That’s completely different from a beginner workshop.
If I had waited until I “studied more,” I probably wouldn’t have gone
Of course, knowing more about AI and programming lets you do more.
There’s no doubt about that.
But if I had been saying things like:
“I’ll study AI a bit more first.”
“I’ll learn to code a bit more first.”
“I’ll properly understand hackathons first.”
I probably wouldn’t have gone.
I mean, at the start,
I didn’t even know the word “hackathon” (haha).
I went without really understanding it,
saw it for myself,
asked people,
and slowly started to get it: “Oh, so this is what it is.”
For example, on the third day, a staff member from Product Hunt came to the venue and went around talking to teams they were interested in and interviewing them.
That was the first time I had ever heard of Product Hunt.
When I asked my teammate,
“What’s Product Hunt?”
they kindly explained what kind of service it was.
At my first hackathon, I also came across a world of services and products I hadn’t known about before.
That order worked better for me.
In the end, the most interesting part might be the people
At first, I thought it was an event for looking at AI and technology.
But after joining a few, what I find really interesting is
the people who come.
Engineers I would never normally talk to.
People who use AI in their jobs.
People from overseas.
People trying to build something new.
Even just asking,
“Why did this person come here today?”
is interesting.
At my first hackathon, on the last day, there was a social gathering after the awards ceremony, with sushi from Sushi Zanmai.
There, a participant who knew a lot about the AI industry talked in a lot of detail about things like the competition between OpenAI and Anthropic, and what Google might do next.
There’s almost nobody around me who usually talks about AI companies and the industry in that much detail.
So it felt really fresh.
A hackathon is a place to build something, but it’s also
a place where you suddenly end up on the same team as people you’d never normally meet, and spend hours thinking together.
I think that’s what I really like about it.
To anyone thinking, “I might not belong there”
Before my first hackathon, I was completely in the mindset of:
“I don’t really belong here, do I? Sorry.”
But I went anyway.
Nobody came with me, so I went alone.
I wrote about myself on the shared slides.
I took the mic at the venue and said:
“Someone please join my team. If nobody does, please let me join one.”
And somehow, it worked out.
Of course, not every hackathon is the same.
Some are easy for beginners to join.
Some are quite competitive.
Some are centered on English.
Some are easy to join solo.
Some require a team in advance.
There really is a wide range.
So I think it would be a bit of a shame to lump them all together as
“Hackathons aren’t for me.”
On this site, I’m planning to share not only the hackathons I’ve actually joined,
but also AI hackathons, Build events, and hands-on AI workshops you can join in Japan, and things that are helpful to know before your first one.
Because I started from
“Where do you even find events like this?”
myself.
So I want this to be a site where people who are thinking,
“I kind of want to go. But is it okay for someone like me to be there?”
can end up thinking,
“Okay, maybe I’ll give this one a try.”