ETHWarsaw Pre-Hack - How to prepare a hackathon pitch - Tomek Kolinko

uh hi everyone I will give you uh give you a few more moments I must tell you I spoke in this room a few times and this is like one of the most difficult rooms to speak in because because if there is a single person talking aside from this from the speaker here like it totally breaks the uh the whole presentation so so seriously like this is the most difficult room that that I have ever had a chance to speak in anyway my my name is Tomic I uh there was a time when I was into crypto and there was a time when I traveled all around the world to uh to visit hackaton to visit conferences to pit my project to be a judge in the projects and and whatnot and that's why I hope I'm qualified to to give you a quick overview of what to do during the pites and what not to do when it comes to hackaton I've been to on a few few few of those so I've been to eth San Francisco I think eth Denver a few times that's quite fun uh eth Berlin eth wara I yes the first one I think I've been there and eth Singapore so these were the hackathons that I participated when it comes to ethereum so I got got a chance to travel around the world and just see pictures and I must tell you there is only a single pitch that I remember out of all of the pites that I ever heard and that was the pach of Remco from 2018 in eth Denver and that's quite amazing if you think about it you know like listening to only one and remembering only one of after some time and I wonder like what did REM could do so well that other people usually uh don't don't do uh that was the question and uh sorry I'm a little bit distracted because if anyone is speaking here in the room it seriously can be heard guys uh the guy in the glasses yes that's you like we can seriously hear like it's super distracting if anyone speaks here yeah I know I know it's it's terrible okay yeah thanks thanks a lot all right so uh so eth Denver Remco and why was his presentation memorable he prepared a smart contract profiler so his tool what what it did was it analyzed smart contracts line by line and checked out how many uh how much money is spent on each single line and it did a chart so so it showed know next to each line how much money was spent and and that's that's what he did the reason his presentation was memorable was that he managed to narrow it down this super complex thing to just a few simple words and you know explained his speech well and then in the end he he gave some examples of real contracts and then in the end he had a Lambo mode where he converted all the prices or all the money that was spent on on on on lines of the contracts into Lamborghini and show that and that was quite hilarious because we could see on the on the projection screen that there are Lamborghinis and we can see how much contract costs measured by that and that was kind of funny and I know that it's not funny perhaps now the way I explain it but that was the memorable presentation that I have seen that was the most memorable presentation that I have ever seen now it is quite simple to Peach on a hackaton really and uh you know you talk about what you build you say what is co about it and you make sure that 70% of people understand it and the reason I say 70% of people and not 100% is that you know for every single thing that you do there will be always people that are not technical enough or from a different sub subset of a field of of blockchain space so so of course like not everyone will understand but the important part is that you want to make a presentation that will be understood by most of the audience so if you are doing something similar like super super specific you're using you know developing some kind of a niche uh Niche thing on a niche library and whatnot your job as a presenter if you want to present well is to find out what is the metaphor what is the way to explain it in such a way that people really get it and you can think of it like kind of like the Star Trek uh movies or shows there was always something technical that was you know technical explanation and then there was some kind of a metaphor that was that allowed people to to Really grasp what was what what was being said and done right now it is simple but now most of the projects fail and the way the projects fail is that well one of the things is the projects talk about the team too much and that was also mentioned by the uh by the first Speaker here today uh you know like when you have just three minutes your goal is not to talk about the team like it's not a startup weekend it's not a business business presentation with not it's a hackaton so your goal is to talk about what you have done second thing uh that people kind of mess up is they talk about what they planned to do and what they failed to do and you know I've been in a place where I was on a hackaton and I kind of you know I wanted to do one thing I spent the whole first day of trying to build something I failed and then I delivered just you know 5% of I what I really really wanted to to deliver right and the Temptation is to explain all the big Vision all the failures and what you wanted to build and then say Oh but I buil just this skip it and do not talk about the things that you didn't manage to to build to just pretend that you wanted to build that in the first place and I know again this may seem like very simple tips but most of the projects fail in one of those things that's why uh we decided to to mention them here now another thing is uh the presentation can be too Technical and you know we're on a hackaton so it is normal that people are technical here but even among the technical people there are levels of technicality and you can go way too deep or you can wait go way too narrow and someone you know i' I've built the compilers for smart contracts I'm super technical right but I still failed to understand some of the presentations that are being done on the hackathons because they're too Technical and too narrow for me to to grasp right so so try to go a few levels up and try to make people understand and you know I've been I managed to build a few algorithms in my life and they were extremely extremely complex and extremely difficult but still I managed to make a three minute pitch about how you know like about something simple and simplify it a lot so try to simplify now one more thing is that sometimes the pictures are unclear and that that lack of clarity can be like the the work like sometimes during the pctures what is not clear is what was being built during the hackaton and there are two two things where it goes wrong sometimes one thing is especially for people that are building more like customer Centric things uh sometimes they build something and you end up watching the peach and you don't know if they programmed the thing if they designed the thing if they just glued some pieces together so make sure during your Peach after you explain what what what you wanted to do make sure that people understand what you actually build so did you program it or did you design it or or what was what was that right so that's one thing and then second thing which is important and that's a reason of awkwardness a few times uh is that uh it is uh some teams didn't specify what was being built on the hackaton so you know let's say that you're using a framework that you developed in your spare time before the hackaton right or sometimes software houses uh prepare a lot of stuff beforehand and then just do the final touches on the hackaton and and there have been cases where some teams were even disqualified after the fact because some someone claimed oh we built this this and this but it turned out that it wasn't exactly built during the hackaton so make sure that you explain what you actually did and not you know like try to not leave room for like misunderstandings here and then uh the last thing which is quite technical is messing up sound so if you want to record your presentation do not mess up the sound check out how you know what's the best uh microphone that you might have and use that microphone and sorry speaking of the sound like my throat is killing me so so that's why today I I cannot speak that well but make sure that your sound is correct if you're speaking in person aside from making sure that your throat works properly do not speak too fast make sure that you are understandable don't hold your microphone to far no stuff like that no sorry now you will have three minutes if I remember correctly right or will it change like 3 minutes during for the peach or five minutes or however much not you will not have enough time oh thanks you will have three minutes to do the presentation right or 5 minutes that will be very little time to to present whatever you want to present right and that requires you to prepare even more uh it's it's more difficult to prepare a three minute presentation than half an hour presentation and and yeah um what what's the difficulty there is that you will be able 3 minutes gives you enough time to only show one thing and show it well so there is very little room to to you know like not not know what you want to exactly say so these three minutes when you start to prepare your presentation think about what is the single thing that you want people to remember from your from your beach and that you know if you manage to make people remember that single thing then you will succeed just like rco who presented the lambo project profiler and people still remember it after after six years or or whatnot right so don't try to give too many details and what not just make sure that you know like what you want to say and you know that's that one single thing second tip is that the project and the peit go together what I mean by that is sometimes people just build the project and then afterwards they they prepare the peach and sure you you can do that and you know it's like whatever works it's a hackaton it's supposed to be fun right uh although right now the atmosphere is quite serious but like it's the hackaton so it's supposed to be uh fun now good pites usually you know like they when when someone was building the project they took into consideration the fact that they will have to pitch it afterwards right so in case of rco speit like the thing that they did is they fix it slightly right so they added this lamb Lamborghini view of of how much was spent just to make the presentation more fun and better right and there are sometimes some small things that you can do in your projects that will look good on on a beach and will make the pit more more me memorable if you're more experienced you can also try to design projects from the ground app wondering how you will present it to the people and not only during these three minutes but you know if you're building any sort of project you want to have a following right so it's not about you know like few few of us want to build something and just you know put it put it somewhere in the corner and don't have an ambition to for anyone to see it right so think from the ground up how the project will also be presented and and you know ask yourself is there are there any small things that you could do in the design of your project that would make it more understandable from the ground out yeah like that was the question what's the one thing that people will remember after the presentation and I ask myself every single time of that and the third thing is uh distillation so the way I do that do do the peaches and when whenever I have to Peach is I write out the peach or you know outline of the pit and then you know especially with this 3 to 5 minute pites I ask myself what is still what still can be removed and I keep removing things and keep removing all the distractions until my peit has no nothing that could be removed that that would not torpedo the the the the meaning of of or what the pitch is about right and this is possibly the most important thing so you know there is one thing that you want to people to remember after the pit and now the question is like what is distracting and remove everything that is distracting from your pach and and just you know distill kind of like refactoring of the Cod now when it comes to inperson Pro tips talk to the audience like that's my Approach at least not everyone is doing that but you know if you have a chance you know get familiar with the audience and uh and adjust the presentation slightly or at least adjust the tone of your voice adjust slides adjust anything to if if you have a chance to the audience right from my experience usually I prepare presentation in one way then I go into the room and I see that the audience is totally different right and uh you know like here for example I had to be way more serious because there were people talking in the background right so so like that's that's you know in in case of other audiences like there is the whole room laughing and and and you know just the mood is completely different so it's nice to know the the you know the feeling of the room and also understand what kinds of people are in the audience and perhaps you can sometimes adjust slightly uh your presentation to that second thing is I contact with the audience and that's one of the things that someone taught me very early on when I was learning how to do public speaking you know like don't be afraid of the stage don't don't don't be shy too much and if you are panicking or you don't know what to do just know stand here straight and just look at yeah smiling faces in the audience and and and just you know take your time take a breathe or two and and take your time and it will all be good right so that is what you can uh yeah like that's that's worthwh to do slowing down and taking your time that's one thing that I keep forgetting often times but really you do not want to talk too much especially during the the pitch you do not want to overflow the audience with too much details you want to convey a certain concept of what you did certain feeling about what you did and you want people to remember you if you talk too much like it will be just noise noise noise and take your time you know remove the words not uh not speed up to fit all the words inside I know that I said that but you know sometimes it's nice to repeat that you should realize how little you can say in three minutes and now I have a joke like clar it with the audience but uh it actually touches upon this this subject slowing down and taking your time like the thing is like doing a pach is kind of like going on a date and I think that you know regardless of the gender like one one approach of going on a date and I think very few people have that approach is you go on a date and you just say oh these are my good points right these are my bad points and you know this is my portfolio I don't know of previous projects these are my reviews and just overflow with the data right like even if you are a good person like this approach will not work because it's more about emotions and about things and about understanding and a lot of other things right the same goes with peaches right it's not about just saying oh this this this this and this it's more about giving the audience time to understand you to memorize you to trust you and giving your audience time to really to really get you all you know right so it is a little bit similar like going on a date in that aspect don't speak too fast don't speak too much and there is only one thing that people will want to remember or you want people to remember and that was very quick sorry for if it's uh there is not perhaps like if it's not enough but I think that's like those are the few points that I think would make the presentations better the question is if you have any questions uh to to me or to anyone else okay it's hard to lose a contact in with audience you just uh oh I understand what you mean oh like you you you Peach and then you see that everyone is like somewhere else right during the paches it's not your fault usually it's fault of the 20 previous peaches that were boring right so the contact was lost already probably right so so it's a difficult environment first of all I would say I usually try to focus on one or two or three people and kind of give it to myself as a challenge to make them look look here right so so just you know I try to make it more interesting or or something like that and just make it you know hopefully you know bring the attention back if you lose contact that again means that you might be talking too fast and you're trying to convey too much of the information right so that's that's the thing another thing is using pauses and you know today my technique is may not be too too good because of my throat but using pauses the moment there is silence on the stage it's the moment that people instinctively look look at you right so if you say just hello and you give a second to the audience right that posst will bring them back to you right but the question is like what will you do with that attention right so that's that's uh that's that's yeah like that's the challenge I hope that helps I go with something that refers to a topic that I'm familiar with and it really helps if you have a pet and if you can like tell it something funny that your pet did or you have a kid that did something stupid or something and it just like it helps to ease the tension and then it's um last year we hosted foro VC and I've been sitting for a room for the whole day and I listened to like 30 pages and there was multiple times when the audience was super fed up with with everything the room was poorly ACD and it was warm and stuffy and it helps to just show like a little um understanding for the people tuning in and say hey I know you're super tired I know you're exhausted you've listened to a lot of things today let's make this fun and quick so try to go with something that's loosening the mood but I always refer back to the dogs I mean the something funny always always works to get the attention back up and then you can slowly tune back into talking about your what you're presenting all right any more questions uh what was the most uh memorable for you pitch you've given and why oh the most memorable I can tell you most stressful ones so that was from eth Singapore and that was quite fun I was building a Project based on my API of my DEC compiler right and that was quite a cool project I was quite proud of that and the pictures were not in front of the stage which I'm used to but just private with jurors right and you know I like to think of myself as a person that doesn't get Star Struck very easily so if there's someone important I don't care right I'm I'm myself right so I go into the room filled with judges and it's like three J Jes and one of them is vitalic right and that was like kind of stressful because one thing is you pitch to an audience of 100 people you know or a thousand people or whatever like right but another thing is you pit like literally standing next to the founder of ethereum and you try to pitch your project right so that was the most uh you know like the most memorable to me and like the most difficult I would say uh and what else I could tell you yeah I would say that that's like that's possibly like the the craziest story that they have when it comes to teaches right and yeah I got I got stuck and I I got stressed and and whatnot yeah uh other questions here or challenges or any stories that you have they usually like a q for a pitching so I I want to know what do you think which place at que is the pitching is the best because if you pitch the first one you like okay you don't know what's what's other people do and the end you're like the most boring stuff the end presentations like you know it's there there there's no good answers right when it comes to judges they usually have a list of projects anyway right so so you know it will not matter that much because they will just take take notes the second thing is if you're doing a project and it's like a bigger hackaton usually your target is like 10% really of the people you you want to make it understandable to 70% of the people right but your real Target is like 10 % of the people that are interested in a similar framework and and you know similar things to to you so that they will come up to you and talk to you afterwards right so just I would say from that perspective it also doesn't matter too much as long as you present well and uh and you know if you use a pause and you make it really simple and obvious on what you're doing right like you will get those people's attention and they they will not miss your project now having said said all that of course I wouldn't want to go to Paris to ever like I would give give that privilege to someone else right I would probably try to be in the first 25% so the audience is not tired it yet but I hope I would have some kind of energy and you know something to reference uh that that happened before me right so so I would I would personally prefer that part but you know I think anything goes if you have a good presentation just don't go the first after lunch it just doesn't work like nobody listens they like oh yeah this one doesn't work but I think what's also important is that your presentation is going to be reviewed twice so once when you're presenting and then once after all the pitches are are done and the judges are actually making up their mind and this is the the moment when they're actually going to hey is this project worth it or not so it's good to make your self memorable during the pitch but they will have an option to review your video your submission after that they will have an option to take a look at the at the code after that so like I think during the pitch make yourself memorable like make yourself stand out in some way and then it's going to be easier for them to remember what you actually did so um you're going to be judged twice once when you're presenting and then um after that no after all of the projects go and uh we've been judging projects for for so twice this uh twice already and we're going to be doing um this again this year and very very often like we go through for the projects and it's like I don't really know what they do I don't remember what they're doing and I really need to go deep deep into that and you also have the project that you uh remember right away you just know what they do you know who they are H you don't have any issues um recollecting what that team is doing so try to make sure that you are memorable and that you stand out yeah speaking of that uh speaking again as I pass the judge and sitting on that other side they're like if I do not understand what the people did in the project then that's like not a official disqualification but like I cannot choose that team to win right so so I there have been situations where I've seen projects that are that seem awesome but I just don't know which parts were done on the hackaton which parts were done beforehand which parts are Frameworks and whatnot so that's why it's important to make it clear what you actually did and of course it's important to make people understand what what you what what you exactly did and why it's interesting why it's special to some in some way and whatnot right so so that these are the things that are very important uh right any more questions we good awesome thank you so much thank you thank you toek uh [Applause]