Hackathons

I went to two hackathons this weekend. The experience was humbling, and inspiring, and a little scary, but I'm so glad that I decided to go. The first one, The AT&T Mobile App Hackathon, was just the first event that I found going on near me. I kind of make mobile apps, so I thought it would be right up my alley. When I got there though, it was clear that I was out of my depth. The focus was on IoT, which basically involves interacting with hardware. It went on from 6pm to midnight, and from 9-9 the next day. I left after a few hours, but it was worthwhile. I saw some cool sensors, I meet some smart people, I found out what IoT is, and when I got home I immediately started writing down ideas for app that I could make.

A guy I talked to that night, told me about Ship-It Saturday, a hackathon held by a web dev bootcamp called Launch Academy. It was a lot more free wheeling, non-competitive, and really just about making something, so the next day, I went to that. This one was actually perfect for me. It was a lot smaller than the night before and there was a more collegial atmosphere. I didn't work with anyone else because they were mostly doing web dev, but talked to people about their projects and my own. I didn't realize before how valuable it is to have those sort of technical conversations with people about what you're working on. Explaining my app to other people, helped me understand it better myself, and they had interesting ideas too.

I didn't have a finished product at the end of the day, but it was a great working on an app, of my own, for 9ish hours. I learned a ton--I was surprised by some of the things I managed to do, and the experience highlighted areas that I want to try to understand better.  A lot of the projects people were working on were really cool. It was great watching people collaborate and it was just good to be around peers. And they had free pizza and beer! 

I'll definitely be going to more.