From Participant to Organiser: What DOOMSDAY 2026 Taught Me

We walked into the hall in the morning. The hackathon had started the evening before, so by the time we arrived, the teams had already been building through the night.

You could see the night on their faces.

I knew that look. For a long time, I was the one who had been up all night at a table like that.

At DOOMSDAY 2026, I was in that kind of room again. This time I walked in from the other side.

The same room, a different seat

DOOMSDAY 2026 was a 24-hour hackathon at SRMIST, conducted by SRM ACM SIGCHI. More than 1,000 people registered and 200 were selected. Techcora was part of it, and I was part of the Techcora team that helped conduct it.

We were there from that morning until the evening. It is the stretch of a hackathon when an idea has to turn into something you can actually show.

When you take part in a hackathon, your world is small. It is your team, your problem and the hours you have left. You do not think much about who arranged the hall, who planned the schedule, or who kept things running while you built.

This time I got to see that side.

Through the day, walking between the tables, I kept recognising people. Not their faces, their situations. The team arguing about whether to start over. The one person still fixing a last bug. The nervous run-through before the demo. I had sat in each of those seats.

What nobody sees

People sometimes ask how you get from one side of the table to the other. I do not have a clever answer.

There was no single big day. There were many ordinary ones. Projects that did not work the first time. Evenings spent learning something nobody had asked me to learn. Work done carefully when no one was checking.

None of that gets applause. A hackathon shows 24 hours of someone's effort. It does not show the months before it. But those quiet months are what you actually bring to the table when the clock starts.

Silent work does not announce itself. It adds up. Then one day you notice that you are being trusted with something you once only attended.

Why Techcora was there

For Techcora, this was more than supporting an event. We came to meet people early in their journey, hear their ideas, share what work in the industry really looks like, and open doors through internships and industry exposure.

I am grateful to Abin Wc, our founder, whose contribution and support made our involvement possible. Being trusted to represent the company in a room like that meant a lot to me.

To the 200 who built through the night

If you were at one of those tables, here is what I would like you to know.

The result of those 24 hours matters less than you think. What matters is that you showed up, stayed, and built something with other people under pressure.

Keep doing the quiet work after the event ends. Somebody notices, even when it feels like nobody does. And the seat you are in today is not the seat you will stay in.

Thank you

Thank you to SRMIST, SRM ACM SIGCHI, the faculty coordinators, the organisers, the volunteers and every participant who made DOOMSDAY 2026 what it was.

I came to hackathons as a student hoping to learn something. I left this one in the evening having learned again, from the other side. I hope we get to do many more.