My First Ever Hackathon and my Team Placed 2nd!!!!

Man, it's still surreal!

In October 2020 when I started UI/UX Design, I would have never in my wildest dreams believed that a year later, I will design a product that will place second in an Africa-wide hackathon!! All this still feels like a dream to me. All glory to God who gives us the strength to do mighty things.

This was my first ever hackathon and I loved every single bit of it. Here’s a short account of how it went and one big lesson I took from the whole experience. Do enjoy! ‍🥰

I found out about the hackathon through my boss. He encouraged me to apply to “showcase my design skills”.

In all honesty, I was very reluctant to register because I was barely a year old in design and I didn’t feel competent enough. However, I thought deeply about it and decided to apply because if you don’t try, how will you know? Besides, the main reason why he was so eager for me to participate was to help me learn how to work in a cross-functional team. So really, there was no harm in trying. With that, I gathered all the courage in me and registered.

After registering, a few days later, I received an email saying that I had been selected as one of the 100 participants out of 500 applicants for the hackathon!!! That alone made me super excited! Maybe this wasn’t a bad idea after all. Maybe God was actually up to something.

Subsequently, the 100 participants were grouped into 25 teams consisting of 4 people each — a product manager, a product designer, a frontend engineer and a backend engineer.

My team consisted of 2 Nigerians, 1 Kenyan and 1 Ghanaian.

Meet my amazing teammates 🥰👇🏽. They made my whole experience the best! I’d choose them over and over again if I had the chance!

Samuel Inchwara — Product Manager (Kenya)

Victory Asokomeh — Frontend Engineer (Nigeria)

Tamaraebi Dogobu — Backend Engineer (Nigeria)

Yours truly 😂💁🏽‍♀️

Very very EFFICIENT team! They carried out the tasks so neatly! I lcouldn’t have asked for a better team!

After the teams were set, the real work was about to begin! We were tasked to build a product that contributes to social and economic growth. It was a bit challenging in the beginning but we did it! Several ideas and iterations later, we managed to settle on a solution. We Called it WeTalk— a web app that allows users to purchase/top-up airtime and bundles wherever they are in the world and pay through any payment method within seconds using Flutterwave and Relaodly’s APIs.

We planned, designed, developed and then submitted all our materials. Now all we had left to do was to wait for the results to be announced.

Truth be told, it was a nail-biting waiting period but ladies and gentlemen, we came out victorious!

Out of 500 applicants, 100 participants (25 cross-functional teams) and 5 winners, my team finished in 2nd place!!! Not fifth, not fourth, not third but SECOND!

It felt so unreal! Almost like a dream!! My joy could not be contained and I am sooo grateful to God, honestly!!

However, aside from the experience and the cash prize(😂), there is one valuable lesson I have learnt throughout all of this — never let fear stop you from doing anything! Imagine if I had listened to my fears and not registered! I would have never known what I am capable of!! I am so glad I didn’t let fear ruin my chances! All glory to Jesus!!

I pray this article serves as a green light for you to do that thing you’re too scared to do for the first time! May you realise that there is no actual harm in trying! The confidence comes from doing it the first time. From there, it's only uphill.

I hope this inspires someone!

Please share this with anyone who you feel might need that little push to do something they’ve never done before. This may be their greenlight.

God bless you!