A Year of Technical Hackathons
Technical Hackathons: Multi-day competitions where software engineers solve social/business challenges and present their solutions to judges and peers.
The first time I participated in a hackathon, I remember my pulse racing, fingers frantically typing as I attempted to push my last-minute changes ahead of the code deadline. If the push failed, everything we accomplished up to that point; the all-nighters, the flight out to San Francisco, the countless hours of coding, it would have all been a waste. And then the countdown started: 10, 9, 8…
A few minutes earlier I tested the code and knew it was up to date and working correctly. What I didn’t know was Murphy’s Law was in effect, and as the countdown continued, the push wasn’t working: 7, 6, 5…
The room was buzzing with developers shouting along with the countdown, high-fives were flying a few feet away from developers pulling out their hair looking totally distraught: 4, 3…
As droplets of sweat ran down face, a mentor who happened to be looking over my shoulder yelled out — “git push -f”: 2…
And with 1 second to go, I saw the familiar “…Resolving deltas: 100%…”, and our code was submitted. We looked at each other stunned, excited and completely spent. The room erupted into applause as the screen read “00:00”.
I was hooked.
Weekend warriors
In the months that followed the EOS Global SF Hackathon, the challenge of learning new technical skills and meeting new people drove me to participate in 6 additional competitions. I entered all of the them with Tiffany Marroquin, my team-mate and a talented front-end developer responsible for large parts of the Herd Platform. Throughout 2019, we won 4 in-person hackathons and 2 virtual hackathons with a rotating group of 8 teammates. Our weekend work resulted in 6 wins and $30K+ in prizes under our belts.
Each competition posed a new challenge, the opportunity to learn new technology, and the chance to work with new team mates. While competing was never easy, it was always fun.
A strategy for success
We didn’t know it at the time, but early on we began using a strategy that can be summarized by the “Three Ds” — Discover, Delegate, and Deliver.
Discover — A strong start to a coding competition meant the team reached consensus about an idea quickly. This was easier said than done as challenges were rarely shared before an event. We started by reviewing all available challenge material, followed by a team member speaking with judges, sponsors, mentors or organizers to uncover any unknowns the challenge text didn’t cover. Once we felt like we hit the nail on the head on the idea, we’d move on to deciding what each team member worked on.
Delegate — On most of our teams, the hackathon was the first time we worked together. We quickly learned that success was contingent on splitting up tasks to make progress on the project simultaneously, and checking in often to make sure no one is stuck or spending too much time on a single task. Eventually we brought all of the pieces together in time to deliver the apps on the last day.
Deliver — Presentations were typically 3–5 minutes in length, leaving us barely enough time to present the problem, describe one or two key differentiators of our solution, outline the technology, and wrap it up with the experience of working together. We chose our words carefully and took turns answering questions.
Our 2019 results are as follow:
Consensus 2019 by Coindesk
CodeHero — 3rd place, Decentralized Github
DevWeek NYC
Snap Station — 2nd place, automated camera station using Canon APIs
ETH Boston by ETH Global
AnonHero — Winner: ETH Boston, Torus & Skale Labs Challenges, provable and anonymous participation in social events/protests
UN SDG Hackathon by: Global Blockchain Business Counsel
HomeHero — Winner: P&G Challenge, measuring water consumption and incentivizing better water usage without whole-home smart metering
Skale Labs— Virtual Hackathon — Winner: AnonHero
Torus Labs Virtual Hackathon — Winner: AnonHero
Ending the Year with Gotham DLT Hackathon
We had learned so much from participating in hackathons that halfway through 2019 we decided to host our own. We selected a team of organizers that believed in the mission of increasing access to DLT technology for a diverse and inclusive community in NYC and got to work. At it’s core, we wanted to create an event for experienced and newer developers alike to learn, build-up confidence, and meet new people while working on distributed ledger technology.
Gotham DLT was scheduled for December 7th & 8th at the Microsoft Center in Time Square. To make it a success, we wanted to bring together a community of sponsors and partners that also believed in our mission. Gotham DLT wouldn’t have been possible without Blockstack, Monday Capital, Brooklyn Law School, Hack for Sweden, Microsoft + Open Source, Amberdata.io, Mindus, Block.one, Blockgeeks, TuiSpace, StartEd, Fullstack Academy, Grace Hopper, Building Blox, Parabellum Music, & the team at Herd.
The Results
On Sunday, 11 teams presented their solutions to a panel of judges that included leaders in Venture Capital, Law, Social Impact, and Blockchain technology, including guest judges all the way from Sweden.
In the spirit of diversity, the developers at Gotham DLT had free range to select the blockchain protocols they built on. The resulting distribution of 27% of applications built on Ethereum, 27% built on EOS, and 45% built on Blockstack reflects the participants’ desire to win technology specific challenges and their familiarity with the programming languages used in each protocol.
The benefits of Hackathons
For Developers: More than prize money
Developers spend countless hours learning every year, navigating an endless deluge of newer, better, more efficient technology. For some, the work is hidden away behind endless development, testing, and production cycles. Hackathons are a chance for these professionals to think outside the box and test their skills, and present their work to their peers. For new developers fresh out of bootcamps, high school students finishing their first comp sci class, or weekend tinkerers learning to code on Udemy; hackathons are an opportunity to learn alongside experienced teammates and build confidence in their skills.
Developers of all experience levels have an opportunity to improve their technical and presentation skills, improve team building skills, and perhaps most importantly, create lasting friendships along the way.
We all want to think something outside of the box and build something new — what’s better than challenging ourselves to do it while receiving feedback from our contemporaries along the way?
For Companies: Technical minds at the height of their creativity working on your technology
Hackathons offer companies an opportunity to connect with developers while providing the necessary structure and incentives to solve problems together. These events can increase the use of pre-released APIs and software packages and provide accelerated R&D with little risk.
For example, at Gotham DLT we used the Herd Learning Platform to deliver all of the hackathon’s training content, making it easier for developers to get started.
We also tested an experimental feedback solution to capture feedback from developers on the apps they liked the most.
Companies can also use hackathons as a team building exercise — at Herd we utilized the DevWeek NYC Hackathon as an off-site training for our 2019 summer engineering interns to foster teamwork.
A big thank you to the organizers
Hackathons aren’t possible without the organizers that make these events possible. For most, it’s a labor of love and a chance to engage the community. A big thank you to the companies and the awesome people that provided opportunities to me and my friends to build in our spare time through 2019: DevWeekNYC, CoinDesk, Block.one, ETHGlobal, Global Blockchain Business Council, Skale Labs, Torus Labs.
