Hackathon lessons

I have been on a hackathon last night, I haven't done this for over a decade. There were a few things I learned:

1. I am a bad UI engineer, but not terribly bad. Just simply bad. I can live with this :) But also I think I could quickly improve my skills in this direction if I had some time. - meaning at the expense of my other projects
2. Family duty is difficult to fit together with all-day all-nigh work. Ok, I kind of knew this, but now I know a lot better.

Things that now I remember a lot better (meaning I knew it):

1. Go prepared. What can be ready ready before the start, must be ready for the start.
2. Preparation is a team-work. All the team must be prepared. Everyone must have the tools installed on their laptops, they must be tested and working fine, all permissions need to be acquired (like github team membership)
   Also it is better to come to agreement on what tools should be used or preferred.
3. A hackathon is not about building an application. For that it would be amazingly bad. It is about building an idea, the purpose of everything that you do on the hackathon is to demonstrate that idea.
4. Perfection is a total enemy in this respect. Whatever works, is fine. Maybe even if it looks crappy. It will be scraped anyway.
   If we are able to demonstrate the idea, someone will have enough time to do this right.
   If we don't not only the code will go to the garbage can, but a potentially valuable idea too.
5. Be OK with what you have achieved. If you are not, you are discrediting the idea, turning the whole team-effort into a waste.