How not to win a hackathon and build a great product at the same time? (Part 1)
Let me tell you a bit about my very first hackathon experience so far. It was an amazing experience and it all started with a tequila night in the office… aaand the next day we signed up for a hackathon, ta-daa!
Ok, you might say, this is not how tequila nights usually end. How did it exactly happen?
First, a bit about myself. I am currently working as a curriculum developer at a company where we teach kids how to code in a fun based way. For short, I spend my days thinking about like: “how would kids understand the concept of the loop better: if they saw a green monster eating several rotten pizza slices OR a spaceship that has to get out of the way of meteors”? To tell the truth, both could work, but there is a lot behind this (pedagogy, developmental psychology, etc.). Drop me a line, if you are interested.
So, this is what I do from 9 to 5, but after that I turn to… a mother of three. Needless to say, I am testing the curriculum on my kids. Very practical!
I spend my remaining time as an aspiring UX consultant and an illustrator. Sometimes I sleep, too.
Back to our story. The company is a franchise network and it has been started in Budapest, Hungary 4 years ago. This year is a huge step for us because among many other great improvements we have just had our first franchise partner in Mexico! As a warm welcome, they sent us a bottle of fine Mexican tequila and many other gifts. So, the owners of the company decided to celebrate the course start with a tequila night.
To retrieve the thread of this explanation, during that specific night it turned out that one of the teachers who worked for us signed up for the JunctionX Hackathon that would soon be held in Budapest (it is still a mystery who this person was, btw). And our boss asked what if some of us from the HQ would also give it a go? It could be a great opportunity from marketing point of view.
We checked the description and asked ourselves, why not? It sounds fun, we might create something great, plus we could win great prizes.
So, we teamed up: two guys (Ádám, the lead developer and Balázs, the FE developer) and three girls (Panna from marketing, Zsófi from support and me from curriculum department).
P.S.
Some guys were singing operetta later that night, and I am more than happy that we didn’t team up for an operetta show.
To be continued…
- Part 2: https://medium.com/@saroltatrk/how-not-to-win-a-hackathon-and-build-a-great-product-at-the-same-time-part-2-3e36570953ba
- Part 3: https://medium.com/@saroltatrk/how-not-to-win-a-hackathon-and-build-a-great-product-at-the-same-time-part-3-84b556540cc6
- Part 4: https://medium.com/@saroltatrk/how-not-to-win-a-hackathon-and-build-a-great-product-at-the-same-time-part-4-4d1556f289c
- Part 5: https://medium.com/@saroltatrk/how-not-to-win-a-hackathon-and-build-a-great-product-at-the-same-time-part-5-fc7d37aadd55
- Part 6: https://medium.com/@saroltatrk/how-not-to-win-a-hackathon-and-build-a-great-product-at-the-same-time-part-6-ea3f073f3613