Our coding bootcamp's cohort has just finished our second hackathon and we've finally become seniors!
A hackathon (as defined by wikipedia), is a design sprint-like event in which computer programmers and others involved in software development, including graphic designers, interface designers, project managers, and others, often including domain experts, collaborate intensively on software projects.
We are given two days to complete a "MVP," or a minimal viable product. We are assigned teams at the end of the day and expected to immediately begin planning using wire-framing tools (such as Figma) and Meistertask to setup a layout of our intended web application. After planning, we assign each person a task to complete and get started first thing in the morning the following day.
"Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success." - Henry Ford
I take these hackathons as more of a learning experience rather than a competition of who can create the best-looking and business-minded web application. While I do consider myself a truly competitive person (I was a competitive swimmer for as long as I can remember), I've come to realize a while back that competition can wait until I've actually gained the knowledge to properly do so.
My team's eagerness to learn and be involved played a huge factor in motivating me to do the same and keep myself focused. Their determination was strong and I truly felt their passion during our hackathon. While it sounds obvious, I can not stress enough the importance of teamwork when working as a team. There's a very high chance that doing things on your own because you think you can do it faster can actually end up slowing your entire team down. And because our teamwork was on point (especially our communication), we were able to finish our MVP without too many issues. With that being said, here's our web application's MVP, Search Near Me:
We use geolocation to automatically find your location and all you have to do is input what you're looking for and a search radius in miles. Clicking search will take you to a new page that gives you the results based on what you input into the fields (shown below). The pokemon changes depending on the current temperature, as well as, the comment (generally recommended clothing for the current weather) that's shown on the top right to the left of the pokemon.
At the end of our hackathon, I couldn't help but feel a sense of accomplishment as a team. Our determination and teamwork were what allowed us to finish our project in a timely manner and without it, it could've easily gone into a different direction. Although this was our cohort's last hackathon, I look forward to working as a team once again. It was great to work with individuals who shared similar goals and I hope to find many more opportunities like this when I've graduated!