Hacker School Reflections, Week 1
Batch 1 of Summer 2014 started 9 June 2014. We are five (5) days in.
Introductory note: If you don’t know what Hacker School is, take a minute to read about it. As context for this post, you could also read a short post about my first day at Hacker School. This post is a reflection on my first week.
There’s a little secret I’ve discovered here at Hacker School (HS). Since you are taking the time to read, I’ll share it with you. Daily checkins are at 10:30. Most of us arrive between 9:30-10:30. As a result, the library is incredibly quiet and the couch extra comfy from 8-9am. It’s perfect for writing, reading, reflecting, and video chatting with my family.
Writing regularly has been helpful for reflection and focus. It’s just too easy for the days to blend together and give oneself a distorted impression of productivity. In addition, it gives an opportunity to re-affirm purpose and a core measure of progress. Sharing publicly seems less relevant to me on the surface. Yet there is research that shows writing something down and letting others see what you’ve written helps the human brain believe and give weight to the words.
The 10:30 checkins have been a great time to hear about what others are working on and consider opportunities for collaboration. They have also been a source of tension for my workflow. I have found that when working on challenging problems, it is critical to have continuous blocks of time to focus. My brain takes some time to build up a map of information relevant to the current problem. Any break in the rhythm of building that map is a setback both in terms of understanding and the time it takes to re-gain contextual focus. So the tension I feel regarding checkins is between wanting to engage well with others and wanting to continue building a depth of understanding within the context of a specific problem. It’s a challenge, like others, that I expect to require an ongoing commitment to continuous improvement and balance.
The Alumni of Hacker School (HS) are incredibly helpful and committed. Before arriving in NYC, they provided tips for both living in NYC and preparing for HS. As I reflect now, one of the suggestions was in the same context of the challenge mentioned in the previous paragraph. There is an internal discussion tool used at HS called Zulip. It’s great to see Alumni answering questions of current students and asking some of their own. Yesterday, there were some short presentations where an Alum presented and a bunch of Alums came to listen and collaborate. Each student has the opportunity to have a ‘buddy’ or former HS student to connect with. I recently had lunch with my buddy at Etsy, where he works. It was pretty cool to get a personal tour and hear about his experience at HS.
One of the things I continue to be impressed by during my time here is the sustained level of genuine interest each student takes in each other. There are many different technologies, languages, and study areas. And everyone is quite capable, competent, and invested in deeper understanding. While I sense that many students know a subject well, the attitude I continue to experience is one of learning and collaboration.
To be honest, there are times when I feel like a selfish ass for not showing deep interest in a student’s project. The fact is that I am super interested. However, I also have a strong fear of the ‘kid in the candy store’ syndrome. Yes, I made that up. I suppose this applies to many different areas of study, but seems particularly applicable to technology which changes so rapidly. I think of it as the tendency to follow an impulse to work on what is new, different, or exciting at the expense of staying focused on a current problem.
This week has largely been a time to connect with others, get a feel for the environment and flow of Hacker School, and sketch a plan for moving forward. It’s been exciting to encounter shared interest in the specific area of mesh networking. There are many ways to approach understanding and making useful products which value from mesh networking technologies. As a starting point, I plan to focus on understating the behavior, performance attributes, and limitations of the iOS Multipeer Connectivity API. I’ve pushed some code to GitHub which represents a project in the very early stages of enabling that understanding via instrumentation of a sample application.
The instrumentation project is primarily about research and gathering hard data in order to understand more deeply. Which in and of itself may be a bit boring. But here’s what super, super exciting. A few other Hacker Schoolers are interested in learning more about this and also want to integrate with hardware. As a result we are collaborating on a project to visualize some of the mesh network attributes via LED strips. I can’t wait to share more about that soon.
That’s all for now. I’ll leave you with a small collection of images I’ve captured this week.
Have a great weekend!
