Celebrate First Hackathon Win
Working as a team can sometimes be painful. But having the priviledge to invite teammates and design the product made it an enjoyment to me. Iris, Celia, Leon and me worked together in this hackathon so well that we won and used the prize to had a lavish Sichuan hotpot the day after.
In June, I saw a post on BrightSpace about a hackathon to be hold on campus. I saw a similar one last semester, but at that time I don’t even understand object-oriented-programming, so I let go of the chance. But I’ve always been curious about hackathons - what are the ideal level of coding for participation? What will people do during the short period? Can people make practical deliverable results in such events?
I went to the event with these questions, and to be honest, this hackathon isn’t a typical hackathon to answer my questions. But I still solved my confusion and nervousness for tech events. The sponsor of this event is a mature student of AC who has years of experience in crowdsourcing and entrepreneurship. He is collecting website design for his new project, which is going to be used in his roadshow in Montreal. This project has a chance to be deployed! It’s thrilling.
Though we only have a short time to familiarize ourselves with his business mode and demands, we utilized our experience in other internet applications and did good research of like products.
I did most of the product design. Not sure what it should be called in English context, in short, i did the product manager job. From the talk, we realized the product was going to be a website that allow people to upload pitches and share to their community and audience, especially future investors. What we got from the sponsor’s resource is a very vague portrait of users and bizarre mode of business, which is not so clear, unique and appealling for investors. I narrowed down the business mode and offered a clear picture of how this service could be operated and monetized.
In my design, this product could have core functions like:
- homepage browsing
- event organizing
- searching
- posting
- joining team
- showcase
- pitch manaing
- user profile managing
For operation and monetization, it would have 4 essential aspects:
- community events
- crowdfunding
- team building
- storytelling
July 8-9 is a short time, but we still made a huge progress in fast pace. We made 8 pages in Figma, while it was the first time for some of us to use it. We learn as we practice and build.
Iris and Leon learned so quickly that they did most creative Figma work, and helped the rest of team to apply our style and principle of design to every detail. Celia made our collaboration remarkably joyful by helping with every rough job and making everyone relaxed with her talent people skill, which I’m not fortunate enough to own.
We spent 2 days together, from 10 am to 8 or 9 pm. On the second I wore slippers on a whim, because I see a lot of programmers did so when they work. They work overtime (though I worked even longer than them) so their choice might be comfortable enough when one has to sit at table for such a long time. It was proved to be a right choice.
What I got from this event is a complete work, and probably … much laughter in our meeting room, and many expirience to eat hotpot/go hiking/walking in the park with with Celia, Iris and Leon atfer we grow trust for each other.
I still have confusion about how a real coding hackathon should be, and if I qualify for engagement, but the confusion would not scare me away from opportunity anymore.