First Hackathon in My Company.
Programming under pressure and presenting to my management!
Background about the hackathon
For the next product my company wants to develop, the R&D decided on 2 mini-hackathons. In the first one, we researched technologies and came up with a nice list of options. In the second one, that was today, each of the 4 teams got a product and was asked to create a working Proof of Concept.
What the hackathon was like
In the first hackathon, we were assigned groups randomly, so I got to work with people I don't know at all.
The hackathon was in the same field my company deals with- video and networking solutions, so it was nice to have a strong background in the domain.
It was a new experience, as I didn't have the courage to go to a hackathon myself, and within my regular working hours, on company time.
What it wasn’t
Due to COVID-19, it wasn’t a face to face gathering, yet the lemonade of this was cool and sweet - I could be at ease at my home office, I could mute everything and focus on some code quietly, or jump back in and see other’s code easily using screen share.
It didn't have any Pizza, sleepless nights, random mingling, or any of the things that happen in a non-company non-covid hackathon, so I still have that to look forward to.
I was overwhelmed at first
The 3rd party solution we were going to explore was announced 5 minutes before we started. As I got up to the team chat, everybody seems to be rushing towards solutions, building the setup we needed, opening port, configuring stuff. I sat there, completely unfamiliar with the product and feeling as useful as an actual log.
Feeling that everybody else knows so much is inspiring and intimidating at the same time, I muted my microphone and tried not to appear as frozen as I felt inside.
But I jumped back on the horse
I took a short moment to wash my face. Even 30 seconds offline can be great to relax and have our focus back on track.
When I got back, a teammate asked for my public IP and key so he can grant me permissions. This reminded me that I'm in a friendly environment where success is shared, and I should be happy to work with savvy colleagues.
I kept my determination and kept digging more and more about a certain configuration until I realized I understood about it more than anybody else, so I jumped on the 3rd party utilization challenge.
The moment I felt I'm bringing value to the team, my feeling got way better. Hiddensight, I realize that I never minded others to know more; I was worried I wouldn’t help and contribute my part.
The challenge was not my cup of tea
About 2 hours in, the setup was done and the main task was a web front and backend. I am unfamiliar with any web stuff, and another dev jumped into writing REST backend and JS front.
I’m a big believer in always learning and keeping up with new technologies. Still, I just finished a couple of hours of tweaking and debugging an unfamiliar server, and spending the next hour of the hackathon studying front-end was a bit too much for me.
But sure I can help somehow
I allowed myself to take the back seat and let someone else drive. but this didn't mean playing around, I asked my team how can I help and did some side tasks related to my field of work.
When there was nothing special to do, I asked others to share the screen and tell me a bit about what was going on. While I didn't master JavaScript during this hour, I got the first impression on a couple of subjects and technologies.
A c++ developer friend had the same obstacles in another team, so she took the initiative to write down all the architecture and components into a slideshow. Her team was 40 minutes to the deadline with no working demo, so she provided them with a safety net- if things would go wrong they can always show the design, so they were never empty-handed.
It’s all about the presentation
Having a good backend architecture is nothing compare to a nice GUI and presentation, which may be the only disadvantage I see to hackathons.
We didn’t have the entire Proof of concept ready in time, so I suggested we show a demo page of the product itself, built-in in their website, to demonstrate the advanced feature and possibilities this solution could offer.
Our two-part demo went very well.
Conclusions
All 4 teams in our hackathon had good, working demos, and since we weren’t actually competing, we enjoyed the great work everybody did.
I overcame some obstacles, helped my team, and will definitely go to more hackathons in the future, but for back-end-oriented tasks.
