Community Spotlight: Mentors & Sponsors of nwHacks 2024
Sponsor Spotlight: Mappedin
Pascale Walters
Tell us about yourself and what you do!
My name is Pascale and I use she/her pronouns. My job title is staff software developer team lead at Mappedin. As an individual contributor, I work on our machine learning projects, and as a team lead, I lead the team responsible for our digital directory product.
What is your digital directory product?
I’ve been saying this to everyone who stops by our booth, but if you ever go into a mall or office building, they’re these giant touch screens that show the map of the mall. Malls are our biggest customer for them right now. It’s our most visible product, so that’s how you can introduce most people to Mappedin. I’m the team lead responsible for developing this product.
How did you get into software development?
My first time programming was in grade eight. I grew up near the University of Toronto, which has a program for girls in grade eight to get started with computer programming. I was recommended by my school to participate in that, and I liked it. When I started high school, I had an affinity for programming so I just stuck with it. So when I started university, I decided to go into engineering because it was kind of a combination of all the subjects that I liked: science, math, and programming. I chose the co-op program at the University of Waterloo where I could do coding and improve my skills.
How did you get started at Mappedin?
I joined Mappedin a year ago. Previously I was working at a sports analytics company also doing machine learning, and it was just time for a change. Some friends who had previously worked at Mappedin told me that it was a great company, and I saw that there was a posting for a machine learning developer position so I applied and got it.
How would you describe the culture at Mappedin?
I would say it’s fantastic. The people at the company are so great to work with, and it’s such a nice environment to show up and to know that everyone wants you to succeed. If I ever need help with something technically, professionally, or personally, there are so many people I can go to, which is fantastic. The culture at MappedIn is also very “rapid-growth”. It’s a small company so you definitely feel like you have an impact on the output of the company, which I enjoy. There are also lots of opportunities for learning and growth — for example, I got promoted from senior developer to staff developer team lead within six months.
Why did you decide to travel with Mappedin to nwHacks today?
Mappedin is based in Waterloo, Ontario, and it’s a remote-first company. I moved to Vancouver in October to switch it up, so I just happened to be here — our company was looking for ways to kind of engage with developers with our maker SDK product.
One idea that the developer relations and marketing teams had was to reach out to hackathons and have students use our products to get some initial feedback and show what potential use cases could be. nwHacks in particular is a Canadian hackathon and it’s a good size, so it worked out for me since I was in Vancouver and I could pop down to UBC and say hi.
Can you share a bit about the remote-first aspect of Mappedin?
The remote first aspect started during the pandemic. It’s been nice to have the opportunity to work remotely. As a developer working with other developers, we frequently need the time to put our heads down and work with minimal interruptions. It’s great to have that opportunity.
We also have a lot of flexibility where we’ll have meetups — for example, myself and another developer who lives in Vancouver will meet up once a month at a co-working space and hang out.
We also have offices in Toronto and Waterloo, so you can drop by any time and meet up with people to break up the week and collaborate as needed. We’ll meet up for more high-level planning stuff, and when people want to do heads-down work, they can go home and do that. We also have in-person events, such as week-long hackathons that the developers all travel to, which ensure that everyone feels included.
Do you have any advice for people who want to pursue a career in software development?
The piece of advice I always give is to say yes to any opportunity you’ve been given and to do it wholeheartedly. You can learn so many things from the places where you would least expect. Whether it’s professionally, personally, or technically, there are so many things to learn and if you do as much as you can, you learn and grow so much as a person. I’m personally very shy, so it’s tough to stand up for myself and fight for opportunities, but it’s so worth it in the end.
Try to seek opportunities for mentorship, whether it be with peers, people inside or outside your company, or your manager. It’s valuable to run ideas by them and to have a grounding opportunity instead of getting stuck in your head.
Do you have any thoughts on the role you’ve taken on in terms of interacting with hackers and mentorship this weekend?
I truly value mentoring other people. I always jumped at the opportunity when I was an undergrad student, and in grad school, I participated as a hacker and then also as a mentor. So, coming back as a sponsor is pretty cool and it feels like I’m giving back because I’ve been there — I can offer some advice on what it’s like.
nwHacks has been fantastic. The engagement and enthusiasm of the hackers have been so inspiring to me, and I’ve been encouraging people to reach out to me or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Mentor Spotlights
Tyler Goncalves
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/n-tyler-goncalves
Tell us about yourself.
I’m Tyler, a software engineer. I started at UBC in 2016, and I’ve been working in the industry for about two years I started doing development in high school and got into it through the UBC CTF club.
Why did you choose to be a mentor for nwHacks 2024?
One of the career options that I’m thinking about right now is an engineering mentor. I’m pretty social for an engineer, and I like the idea of teaching people and helping them grow in their careers. I figured that mentoring here would be a great opportunity to see what teaching new programmers is like.
How does your background help support the participants?
I’m currently working at a startup that works in Typescript. I’ve personally done work like starting a new repo from scratch and starting with products from the infancy phase, all the way to launch. At a hackathon, a lot of it is creating new ideas, bootstrapping a project, and just throwing code together — which I’ve done professionally a lot so far.
I’ve also learned a lot in my career journey, so it’s valuable to provide people with information like, ‘These are the best things you can do at university to get ready for a job’, especially now that we’re in an environment where it’s getting more competitive to get a job after graduating.
What’s your approach when it comes to helping out a hacker?
So far, I’ve tried to gauge their experience with software engineering. The first thing would be to point them to the right resources to learn because realistically not everything can be taught perfectly in the short amount of time that hackers have. At the end of the day, software engineering is all about learning and being able to figure out how something works. Enabling an engineer to learn technology for themselves is better than telling them exactly how to use that technology to fix their project.
What are some resources you would recommend to hackers who are interested in getting into software engineering?
I mentioned the CTF club earlier, which is what got me into engineering. It’s quite similar to hackathons, but instead of building software in a 24-hour competition, it’s a 24-hour competition for software security. So you’re learning to hack in the “reverse engineering sense”. I found doing [CTF] was one of the things that helped me build the skills to seek out problems in code, learn more about debugging, and how to approach problems for yourself.
In general, join clubs where you can interact [with engineering] more than your courses because at the end of the day, they can’t teach you everything. The great part about an event like this is that you can seek out extracurriculars that will help you so much more.
What do you think makes a project successful at hackathons?
From my experience, being able to come up with a creative idea and showing that you thought through the idea and looked at all stages of the process. The engineering aspect isn’t everything. Learning to use Figma, and designing a product — those are things you need, especially as an engineer, and they can be the hardest things to learn. In my opinion, if you can show that off at a hackathon, that’s more impressive than just having a wild engineering background.
Vaibhav Sharma
Instagram: @_.chintuuu._ & @the.bestmentor
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/v-sharma03
YouTube: Chin2InCanada
Tell us about yourself.
I’m Vaibhav, a second-year student studying a combined major in science at UBC. I’m a backend-heavy full-stack web developer, and I’ve been coding for the past four years. I’ve completed more than 20 hackathons, with over 30–35 projects.
How did you get into tech in high school?
We had a tech club called Tech Syndicate from my school in India. There’s something called DTC, or Delhi Tech Circuit, and all the high schools would have competitions between their clubs called tech symposiums. I started coding during COVID, asked my friends to give me resources, and ended up learning front end using Codecademy. I was part of my club as a front-end developer, and in 12th grade, I started doing backend and even got a freelance opportunity.
There are so many possibilities in tech — how would you suggest someone find out what they’re interested in?
You should pick one thing first. Practice it for about 2–3 weeks, and try to build projects, because that’s what scares people. Also, don’t hesitate to ask someone for help. The tech community is great — there are a lot of resources online and in person. Participate in hackathons because that’s a great way to grow and create lots of projects.
Why did you choose to be a mentor at nwHacks 2024?
I believe that I’ve done enough hackathons, so I thought, ‘Why not try this new field of mentoring?’. I feel really great helping people — during HackCamp, I helped a lot of teams and even someone who ended up being a winner. Today in the opening ceremony, he recognized me and thanked me for helping him, so that was a great moment. I like sharing my knowledge; I even have a course on YouTube on full-stack web development.
What advice would you give to aspiring mentors who might not feel qualified enough?
Just be confident, and give it a try. You’ll get the hang of it with just one hackathon. If you don’t know something, you can just politely tell them — you don’t have to feel ashamed.
Special thanks to these participants for sharing their hackathon experiences. We love hearing from everyone involved in making nwHacks a huge success — we couldn’t do it without you!
Don’t forget to check out the other Community Spotlight: Hackers of nwHacks 2024!
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Written by Jennifer Shui, Content Writer
Edited by Victoria Lim, Marketing Director
