It wasn't really a hackathon, it was called the Figma Makeathon, hosted on Contra. If you don't know what Contra is, it's a website where most designers gather, another place for when designers get tired of surfing on X (Twitter).
I wasn't really planning to participate because I was quite busy (thank God) with some freelance work, so I thought I wouldn't have time to build an app for this challenge. But hey, life always has a plot twist. My work finished earlier because some of the clients canceled. So I figured I'd build one app just for fun.
The App
I built AR Piano, where you can play the piano through your webcam by just touching the air. Shit! I should have named it AIR Piano. That would've been cool. Anyway, I built the app and submitted it.
The Notifications
I didn't expect anything. Then I got the first notification, people started liking my AR Piano, commenting that they loved it. After that the notifications never stopped. I got flooded with notifications and suddenly my submission became a Community Favorite. Damn, that felt good.
The community response was overwhelming. People loved the concept. They loved the execution. Some even tried to figure out how I built it. And then something amazing happened—my submission got ranked as the Community Favorite. I was at the top of the leaderboard.
The notifications kept coming. Other participants saw my work and started building similar projects. It was the kind of validation that made me believe I actually had a shot at winning. The momentum was building. The energy was there. I felt invincible.
The Announcement
Turns out the reality is that making it into Community Favorite doesn't mean you're the judges' favorite. On announcement day, I didn't see my name. It broke my heart, my heart was shattered into pieces. I couldn't sleep that day. I stayed awake, it was Ramadan so I didn't sleep until suhoor anyway.
It was the most memorable hackathon of my life, and lesson learned: every challenge is subjective, depending on what the judges like. They don't care if you're a community favorite, even though one of the judges tried to recreate my app.
One of the judges tried to recreate my app. Let that sink in. I didn't win. But a judge was inspired enough to rebuild it. I'm choosing to count that as something.