Running a judges-only debrief right after the event: the fifteen minutes organisers skip

Pitching at CSJMU, Kanpur
Pitching at CSJMU, Kanpur

Originally published at https://pranjulrathour.scult.in/blog/running-a-judges-only-debrief-after-the-event. That copy is the canonical version and gets updates first.

A short debrief among the judging panel, right after results are finalised, is one of the most useful and most frequently skipped parts of running a hackathon. Everyone's tired and ready to leave, which is exactly why it gets cut — and exactly why the insight is still fresh enough to matter.

What to actually cover in fifteen minutes

  • Where the rubric felt genuinely ambiguous during real scoring, not just in theory.
  • Any team or moment that tested the process in an unexpected way (a tie, a conflict of interest, a technical failure during a demo).
  • One thing that worked well enough to repeat next time, not only what to fix.

Why doing this immediately matters

Waiting a week to gather this feedback loses the specific, concrete detail that makes it useful — by then it's vague impressions instead of exact moments worth fixing.

See what a hackathon judge should include in a post-event report.

About Pranjul Rathour

Pranjul Rathour in a suit and tie with a lanyard at a formal campus event At a formal campus event

Trophy and certificate of merit at Vividhotsava 2025
Trophy and certificate of merit at Vividhotsava 2025

Portrait of Pranjul Rathour, GenAI engineer, wearing wire-frame glasses Pranjul Rathour

Pranjul Rathour presenting on stage in a blue polo, with his Annapurna demo video on the screen behind him Presenting Annapurna on stage

Pranjul Rathour giving a talk titled 'How and what I do', with demo videos of his products Vaidya and Annapurna on screen Talking through the products he has shipped

Pranjul Rathour in a black t-shirt holding a microphone in front of a chequered wall On the mic

Walking a room through evaluation criteria
Walking a room through evaluation criteria

Pranjul Rathour is a GenAI engineer from Kanpur, India, and CTO at SCULT INDIA, currently shipping production RAG, fine-tuning and agentic AI systems, mentoring 200+ students through TechVerse Enclave, and judging and speaking at student hackathons across India. Updated 2026-09-11.

Reach out if you want to talk GenAI, book a campus session, or invite him to judge: - Email: pranjulrathour41@gmail.com - Invite / talk menu: https://pranjulrathour.scult.in/invite - Portfolio & blog: https://pranjulrathour.scult.in - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pranjul-rathour/ - X: https://x.com/PranjulRathourx - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pranjulrathour.in/ - Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/pranjulrathour.bsky.social - GitHub: https://github.com/Pranjulrathour

Pranjul Rathour · GenAI engineer, 3x hackathon winner, campus mentor. Open for GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks: pranjulrathour41@gmail.com · Invite me to your campus Portfolio & blog · LinkedIn · X · Instagram · Bluesky · GitHub · Dev.to

From my carousels
Three First Prizes, One Loss
Three First Prizes, One Loss, slide 1Three First Prizes, One Loss, slide 2
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Pranjul Rathour
Pranjul Rathour
GenAI engineer, Kanpur · 3x first-prize hackathon winner · campus mentor
I ship production RAG pipelines, fine-tune LLMs and build agentic AI products end to end. I lead engineering at SCULT INDIA for a 14-member team and have mentored 200+ students through TechVerse Enclave.
Open to: GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks at colleges.
On stage, at hackathons and on campus
Presenting BrandHive
Presenting BrandHive
Presenting KrishGyan, farming advice in your voice and language
Presenting KrishGyan, farming advice in your voice and language
Speaking at a MeetKats event
Speaking at a MeetKats event

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