Hack-a-thons; thoughts and lessons learned
I recently began a fascinating journey to become a full-stack web developer at the Suncoast Developers Guild in St. Petersburg. It is a fantastic program, and they are incredibly involved in the community. The weekend before last, we were invited to participate in a local event as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking activities across the United States. Let me put this in context for you. I began this program 3 weeks ago an didn’t have any prior experience coding other than setting up some email templates on MailChimp or posting a blog on a Word Press site that I use for my business. As you can imagine, I was somewhat nervous about showing up to this event. I was thinking that I would be expected to sit down and begin coding. In the next paragraphs, I’ll tell you about my experience and share some interesting observations that stood out to me throughout the day. I’ll break them into two broad categories: my thoughts on the community of web developers and lessons in leadership and high-performing teams.
Our day started at 9 am where we were introduced to 3 wonderful non-profit organizations which needed help from the group to develop some sort of technological solution. Each organization had a few minutes to present themselves and talk about their needs. We were given a chance to decide in which group we would like to participate. As soon as Sheena from Agents for Change began to talk about her non-profit, I immediately knew this was the project for me. Their goal is to introduce Diversity and Inclusion initiatives throughout the school district in Pasco County, FL. If you know me, you know this is very near and dear to my heart. I wholeheartedly believe that diversity fosters innovation and has a significant impact on product development. You can read more about my thoughts in a recent article posted here on Medium on How Diversity Can Help Businesses Innovate and Expand.
Did I tell you how nervous I was about my limited coding background? Well, 30 minutes into the start of the day, I was quite relieved. I didn’t have to code. We had several people on the team that with coding experience coders and we had that covered. So let me take a pause here and reflect on what I learned about the developer community. It is a very inclusive community. At no point during the day was I treated any differently; like I was just a student. It was the opposite, actually. There were a couple of times I didn’t understand something or asked about things like React or Bootstrap, they took the time to explain. I also realized that I knew more than I gave credit to myself, and people noticed. It gave me confidence and realized how lucky I am by being a part of a program like SDG.
So back to our assignment. The goal was to finish, by the end of the day, a website capable of telling Sheena and Brittany’s story, the ability to capture information from visitors in different categories — teachers, parents, potential volunteers and others — and then able to send them content (emails or newsletters) relevant to their interests based on the group they belong to. The group quickly divided into 3 teams. One that would focus on the content, writing copy in an SEO-friendly way that would allow the site organically rank and get Agents for Change the visibility they needed with our having to spend a lot of money to do so. A second one branched out to work on the layout and design of the front end while the third group worked on the back-end developing the database to store the visitor information and late segment the email communications by segment, the topic of interest, type of audience and deliver relevant content based on that criteria. Now here is what I observed from a team development standpoint. The people in the group had never met before, let alone work together in the past. We were assembled that day and put to work. It was not an issue, quite the opposite. Each person navigated towards the areas of the project they were interested in working on and more importantly that they are good at. John, for example, immediately took the lead and began to think about the database, the structure that was needed, what information was going to be captured and so forth. He literally took it and ran with it. The same happened with the front end. Each of us was engaged in the project making valuable contributions. So often, companies forget this elementary principle when it comes to assembling high-performing teams. By focusing on the individual’s strengths, they become more productive, efficient and get fulfillment from the work they do.
It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. We did run into some difficulties working as a team. And even that was a valuable learning experience. As it turns out, one of the team members who strongly advocated for the use of React, wasn’t proficient enough in the platform to deliver results. So here is one of the insights I took from this. As you look at the task, it is essential to figure out early on what platform is the best fit for the project. Developers have a lot of tools at their disposal to choose from which can make this choice difficult. And even if your choice is not the best, realizing that early on is going to be critical. We did not. Another lesson learned here. Had we held a “stand-up” early on, this issue would have been avoided and kept us on track. At SDC we have a daily stand up. This was the first time I got to understand how powerful this simple concept is. It made me realize the value of attending a program that not only provides us with the technical tools but also non-technical skills to be outstanding developers.
I can’t say how grateful I was to have had this experience. It allowed me to interact with other developers, hear their stores, and learn about their journey into the tech field. Looking back, I had nothing to be nervous about, and by the end of the day, I was exhilarated with all these thoughts running through my mind. Have you participated in a hack-a-thon? How was your experience? I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to leave me a comment.
