Google Developer Challenge: Did You Learn to Insert Ads?
The news about Google Scholarship found me in the end of a disappointing Graphic Design course, which kind of explains the subsequent issues with my app designs :) While I was super excited about the news, it was followed by a lot of self-doubt: will I manage to make it? Will I even be able to complete the course? Will I even be able to get to the next stage?
Immediately my head was full of misconceptions and doubts: coding is so complicated; I haven’t done proper maths since high school, well apart from using statistics that I needed for network planning and my other previous jobs; a year of teaching myself to draw hasn’t turned me into Picasso so I must be not that good at learning; and many many more.
Luckily the study began soon enough! And guess what? My self-doubts were shattered! We made our first “Hello World” app in the first lesson. By the end of lesson one, we could create a small app with coloured text, change fonts and add images. How cool is that? Having made them were one of the most inspiring moments, and I shared my successes with friends and family like crazy!
Me: Hey, look what I’ve made!!! This small globe image redirects to an actual website [I added an intent to my very first project — the card app]
Husband: Wow, did you learn how to insert ads?!
From then on, I was hooked. I tried not to devour the whole course in one gulp, take it slowly and take my time to explore more. It was beautiful. Super well explained, and the agile methodology was very seamlessly integrated into the course. This makes you feel like a coding god, going from five text views to a proper coffee ordering app.
Me: Check this out! I fixed the logics of this complex tennis score app with 6 variables! [Very proud, and used if statements before they’d been introduced in the course]
Husband: Wow, that’s impressive, but did you learn how to insert ads?!
My First Hackathon
At some point a friend invited me to support her on a Big Data Lab hackathon by Vodafone Ukraine. I gladly accepted the challenge. The idea was to use the telecomms data that Vodafone released (the user IDs were properly hashed), and based on this data either offer a product, or work on one of the pre-defined tasks [boring!]. Our team was working on a social product which allows a person to share their location with their trusted person while they are in “dangerous” conditions. There is a need of such a product in Ukraine because there’s no real arrangements that improve personal safety (in other countries there are not only apps, but the whole city architecture is addressing personal security in one of the first places).
That was the first hackathon for our entire team My role was mostly the habitual one: Product Owner/Product Manager, and the rest of the team were all beginning Data Scientists. Somehow, we were one of those lucky teams that made it to the finals of the hackathon. Which was a HUGE victory already: we had rather a social product than a commercial one.
From there on things got curiouser and curiouser. We started working on the product with more zeal, as we were expected to present it to the investors. We lost one team member, had a few technical hiccups and found a new and amazing team member just two weeks before the final show! At some point it became clear we needed a mobile app: a lightbulb went off, this was just the perfect moment to use my Android Magic!
And use it I did: I coded the layouts of the app and made screenshots and spec descriptions. The app is a 3-pager, so I had to learn to switch the pages. This is definitely one of Katherine’s and Kunal’s greatest achievements: even though you don’t know everything, you can always google!
We had a kind of backend, a lot of Big Data analysis done, mobile apps for both major platforms, and a presentation. We brought this all to the final pitch, and managed to do a live demo that worked! We landed third place in the competition, got some Big Data conference tickets as a prise and the glory. The investors, however, were not running after the teams with bags of money, but quickly left after a few drinks.
Back to Developer Challenge
Now, back to Google Developer Challenge. By that time, it was really, really close to the deadline for the final, third project. And guess what this final project of mine was about?
Me: Hey, my AdMob account is live! I am finally going to make the ads work for you! In fact, my whole final project is going to be about an ad!
Husband: Oh finally, you’re going to become a fully qualified Android Dev.
It took some time to make the ads actually work, the layouts be right, all the IDs in their right places, but yes, here I am a fully qualified Ad inserter, making my old man so so so proud.
