Surviving my first Hackathon
A few months ago, participated in the first CEMEX hackathon Open Platform event in México.
The truth is that it was the first time that I attended an event like that. And definitely was an awesome experience: full of fun, joy, and challenges we faced with other teams. I want to take this chance to tell you how I survived my first hackathon and the big opportunity to put into practice my skills as a designer.
What is a hackathon?
“A hackathon is usually a day long (can be 36 hours, 48 hours, etc.) coding competition were software programmers, developers, designers, etc. come together to build and design something cool. “
I need to admit that I’m always open to these competitions and of course what we can achieve by doing it. I never have been in something like that before, and for me was really an exciting opportunity.
Who can join the competition?
This time the committee invited talent from different companies and universities related to software engineering, and design of solutions.
I think that these people gave the best in the competition and also came to have an awesome time. Many different profiles and levels (beginners and also experts in business and entrepreneurship) but for sure people involved in the development of digital solutions.
5s eleven
To be honest, there was not a magic process for creating our team, one friend that is a developer invited me and I just said YES.
Also, the other guys in the team were people from my company but we have never been together in a project. By the time of the invitation, my team was integrated by 4 software developers and me as a designer.
The truth is that it was difficult for me to understand the way I could contribute to the team knowing the basics and dynamics of all (Normally only for developers).
The competition
Finally, all the information were online, we check out all the challenges and the truth is that we couldn’t decide which one we wanted to work in. There was a lot of different ideas and for me, everyone was really interesting…Big Mistake.
Finally, the day was November 3 and I attended by 11 o’clock to the CEMEX Digital Hub in Monterrey. There was a lot of people and that makes me feel really positive.
The staff explained the rules, the challenges, the agenda, and other dynamics (the weird thing was they asked us to complete things on defined periods, but for sure that rule was changed to no limit of time).
I was really excited to start and joined my team as soon as possible, we had our own table to work, and we were ready for the kick off.
Part of the dynamic was talked with each responsible for the challenges and listen to the requirements, expectations, and goals.
It was a funny moment ’cause they tried to convince us to apply for their challenges, and we discover that some ideas were really simple to amaze the crowd or be innovative.
The challenge
The challenges were focused in the construction industry, as CEMEX being one of the leads in the market they have a lot of innovation areas and the objective of the hackathon was to experiment with that concepts and see how to solve problems from the point of view of young talent. They open all the APIS and catalogs to allow developers to create nice solutions.
We decided to work in a peer to peer app, using catalogs and other APIS for operation, allies constructors and more.
Everything just started.
Stage one — Define, think and go!
After talking with our counselor, we started drafting the solution. My role was to help my team to focus on the main requirements, and also bring ideas for the solution, ask some related questions and define the scope of our delivery.
Stage two — A long night of hard work. Execution
While the guys worked in the connections, back-end, front end and more, I worked in a simple branding and UI for the proposed screens, the truth is that I faced a big challenge, for example, the UI wasn’t available, so they need to create their own stuff. I’m not sure how they put together all the stuff, but I’m glad the everything worked as expected.
Stage 3 — How to show this? Preparing the pitch.
Sunday morning and after a lot of hard work, we started to prepare our pitch, the presentation to sell the idea. Here my role was to define in short terms the work we did, what we expected and how our solution can work for real in the world.
I think the most important is to sell real value over the process and methods. How you sell the idea is the key.
Stage 4 — And the winner is…
The final moments gave me a lot of nerves, But I was sure that our team made an excellent work.
The experience
The whole thing was awesome, free food, nice company and cool activities all the day, we had the breakfast free snacks and dinner and a lot of activities (karaoke night XD, ping pong tournament [I discover that I suck]) and of course a lot of good vibes, I met a lot of people from the staff, and other teams.
The result:
I was really really nervous about all, but a second place sometimes is good, you know, that prize paid me concert tickets.
I recognize that if we should change a lot of things in the pitch we probably could achieve a better result, but I think the first place was definitely a good project and had an awesome pitch. They deserve it.
Cool things:
Free snacks and swag from the event.
Lots of new people.
The well-organized event, excellent service XD. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The prices at the end of the competition.
Things we did well:
The execution was amazing, I’m really glad to team-up with these guys.
Things that we could make better:
Be prepared, I think that we should check the rules and challenges, or at least have in mind what we wanted to build. There is time before the hack start for discussion of ideas and more but I think if you are prepared already, is better.
The best:
We won second place!
