Finals are here!
It’s now the final week of Makers and what a journey it has been. However, I feel it’s just the beginning of a lifetime of learning and I am ok with that.
Reflecting on my experience, it has been a rollercoaster ride. Some days were better than others but having an awareness (Thanks Dana!) of when you need to take a break, and being surrounded by the wonderful people at Makers, I have made it through.
Anyways, this is not a post about my time here but rather, I’d like to tell you about our final group project.
We decided to build an Alexa quiz application in the space of two weeks using AWS (Amazon Web Services) developer platform and our wit. Like the Rails project, we started the first week questioning why we made this decision and thinking we would never get it done in time. It was a whole new territory with yet another tech stack we knew nothing about.
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” — Abraham Lincoln
The above quote sums up our mindset when the beginning pace seemed stagnant. We spent as much time as we could as a team working on sharpening our skills on individual aspects of these new grounds but, after a slow start and burning the midnight oil on the weekend; we started week two with a functioning app that could be launched and asks the user five random questions. We even managed some sound effects to jig it up. \o/
As we now approach the last two days before showing off our hard work to family and friends. I would like to thank my wonderful team, Carol, for coming up with the idea of trying something new with Alexa. Adam, for his usual witticism that kept the tension and frustrations at bay. Rodrigue, for spending time with the AWS tools and transferring useful knowledge when we reached wit's end. Hui An, for keeping the team in check by ensuring we all communicated regularly and everyone was aware of their daily tasks.
Finally, to Makers and its staff, for granting us this opportunity that made us continually challenge ourselves. We can definitely learn anything by ourselves!
