Hackathon
Hackathon - apparently to a lot of people, hackathons are a convention of geeks who type mumbo-jumbo into a computer which results into more mumbo-jumbo breaking into computer systems and getting all their stuff.
Though, on the contrary, it’s not:
A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest or codefest) is an event in which computer programmers and others in the field of software development, like graphic designers, interface designers, project managers and computational philologists[1], collaborate intensively on software projects. - Wikipedia
Wait, aren’t hackers bad?
Well, to straighten things out, let’s ask good ol’ Wikipedia one more time:
A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and stretching their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary.
A hacker is someone who thinks out of the box, to stretch beyond capabilities.
So I wanted to know if I can be a hacker, in spirit of such a term - so I joined a hackathon.
FourSquare Hackathon - Philippines
(Photo from WebGeek)
There were a lot of ‘firsts’ today:
- It was my first hackathon experience ever.
- It was FourSquares’ first Philippine based Hackathon.
- It was SMART’s first ever partnership with FourSquare.
- Maybe it was the first time a lot of people got filmed by a television crew (NET25!)
Me and my teammates roughly had any preparation for it due to schedule, but hey, it was a 200PHP entrance fee, and I might as well get into a “first”. In particular to anything in life, it’s exciting to have a “first”, you never really know what you might learn in the end.
Some personal highlights:
- I woke up pretty early for this, me and Cawi met up and went to SMART around 830AM. Man the internet there was just crazy, 300MB download in 5minutes.
- Theme for the hackathon - It’s More Fun in the Philippines. Build something in that theme under nine hours, demo it in a smartphone (Demoed my teams’ app in a Windows Phone)
- Lunch time = energy of the room was at its peak.
- Free flowing food!
- 1 hour before judging = tension.
- Presentation = It was pretty dull of me to tell the panel of judges that our app error comes from hitting the API limit, though we were really burning through a lot of requests since the app roughly sends 16 requests, per click of the form. After presenting, under further investigation, I personally approached Sajid Mehmood and told him my findings before they did their judging: the app error came from a wrong looping algorithm in one of our
ViewModelclasses, he commented: “Ah I see, though I still like your concept, I would have used your app when I got here. It’s what I need.”
Winning
(Photo from WebGeek)
See that picture up there? (I’m the one in that red jacket)
In reality, I was a little tense during that time since the Hackathon is around 30minutes to finish, but whenever I see this candid blurred photo of mine, I see genuine enjoyment. It wasn’t fun, but it was joy for me. There’s a big difference in that.
After the announcement of the winners and learning that we clearly lost, I was feeling a little down, but only for a few seconds. I realized that from the first hour of participating in the Hackathon, everyone had already won.
- Winning the competition against themselves.
- Winning the battle for focus.
- Winning the struggle of stagnation.
- (I haven’t included people getting free t-shirts, woohoo!!)
They learned how they “really” work, they learned how they “speak” towards a panel of judges about their app, they learned about what they really “know” about developing an app in their chosen language, but mostly it’s not about that. Everyone learned a lot, not necessarily in honing their respective skills, but most importantly, everyone learned a lot about themselves.
To some, it seems embarrassing to be still learning, but there’s no time for embarrassment, even at age 40.
You would most certainly agree, when people reflect on what happened and what they learned from themselves during those 9 hours - that’s a win right there. That’s worth a whole lot.
In particular to anything in life, it’s exciting to have a “first”, you never really know what you might learn in the end.