Mentors
Mentors are critical in guiding, advising, and supporting student teams throughout the hackathon. We welcome experts from diverse backgrounds to share their knowledge and perspectives.
Potential mentors include:
- Industry professionals : To provide insights into real-world problems and user needs and evaluate ideas.
- Technologists : To advise on feasibility, architecture, and tools for developing projects.
- Designers : To provide guidance on UI/UX, product design thinking and customer experience.
- Entrepreneurs : To guide business models, product-market fit, and pitching.
- Domain experts : To share knowledge on specific industries and nuances.
- Recruiters : To provide career coaching and hiring insights.
Mentors would interact with teams during ideation, check in on progress, provide feedback, and help prepare final pitches. Mentoring is an opportunity to scout promising talent, give back, and be inspired by youth innovation.
Mentors Responsibilities
Mentors should offer guidance to help steer the student teams' projects and approaches rather than explicitly directing the students or making design decisions. They can make technical recommendations based on their expertise and experience. However, students should drive the goals, innovation, and building of prototypes
Spending allotted time in mentorship sessions
- Mentors commit to spending a defined number of hours with assigned student teams
- During the sessions, mentors assess students progress and the next steps. They highlight potential issues, offer feedback, and provide their perspective
Asking questions and validating assumptions
- Mentors are crucial in asking constructive questions about students' problem statements, proposed solutions, designs, etc.
- This allows students to validate assumptions, test ideas, consider edge cases, and improve.
- Asking the right questions facilitates learning over just providing advice
Connecting teams to subject matter experts
Mentors utilise their professional networks to connect students to domain experts who can further guide projects. These experts specialising in relevant areas act as additional mentorship resources.
Following hackathon contribution guidelines
While mentors advise teams, there are limits set by hackathons regarding direct contributions. Mentors cannot build significant prototype code/functionality themselves. The solutions must ultimately be student-driven innovation with guidance, not over-involvement from mentors.
FAQ
Most frequently asked Questions
We welcome applications from technology professionals, subject matter experts, designers, engineers and others with at least five years of industry experience who are passionate about innovation. Strong communication skills are valued as mentors guide students through questions and advice.
We anticipate mentors commit to 8-10 hours across the 2-month hackathon timeline. This would involve an initial kick-off, multiple touchpoint sessions with an assigned student team and concluding with the final project demos.
Students outline their areas of interest and skills when applying. Mentors also indicate their expertise domains in the application. Our program committee strategically matches mentors to teams based on mutual areas to enable practical guidance aligned with mentor strengths.
Teams can meet their assigned mentors virtually over video calls or in person if attending onsite for parts of the hackathon. Specific touchpoints like the kick-off and finals are in-person events. Additional check-ins can be organised either way based on mentor location and availability.
We do not sponsor flight and accommodation for out-of-town mentors to attend the in-person portions of the hackathon; travel allowance is outlined to mentors who may need sponsorship before applying.