From hackathon “leftovers” to unanimously-decided winning team: My first civic-hackathon experience
The woman speaking on the stage that Saturday morning referred to the 40 or so before her as information technology people.
And that’s funny because the guy to my right had just told me that the term “IT” was basically labeling someone a dork.
Good to know. I had just asked if he was in IT, and didn’t want to offend again.
He shot me a glance of disapproval at the speaker’s IT label, but honestly, I felt honored.
I come from a print journalism background, but call me IT all you want.
“Doesn’t it feel good to be around all these smart people?” a visitor asked me the first night of Hack for Savannah, Open Savannah’s civic hackathon. He was new to the tech world like me.
“Yes!” I said.
I arrived timidly and sat close to the door, aware of my tech-lack. But I want to help my city better prepare before the next hurricane. Also, I recently finished a six-month coding boot camp that certified me as a full-stack web developer. Yet I lacked the corresponding confidence. The event’s assurance that special technical skills weren’t required helped.
The hackathon crew was a welcoming bunch. I was thanked more than once for being there.
Thanked for volunteering at this cool, downtown setting with smart people, delicious sub sandwiches, prize money and a hurricane cause I’m down with.
No, I think, thank you.
But because of no-show registrants, four lonely souls were still without a team Saturday before noon. They — we — would become Team Wright Square (named after a historic Savannah square). We introduced ourselves hours after other teams had begun.
Lu has a teaching and engineering background. He is deftly aware of deficit, and among his skills, he asks questions that fill holes. Yes, the death from last year’s hurricane was more of a freak accident. Yes, I should state our idea sooner in the essay. Yes, we shouldn’t focus too much on personality types.
Rachel hails from a public relations and marketing background. She was sunshine and chatty Sunday morning when we were quiet and sleepy. She struck up brainstorming sessions, made our presentation slides, and drew loud laughs from the crowd with a well-timed quip during our pitch: Does anyone get anything done without a deadline?
Hernán, a graduate student and designer, shone with ideas, including our timeline counting down from the 120 hours before a storm, and a focus on author Gretchen Rubin’s four tendencies seen in people during an evacuation. Our slick prototype was also his work.
I wrote, preached anecdotes, gathered info and boiled down jargon into yummy bites.
But we didn’t code. I started to, but saw it wasn’t necessary.
We sat in our seats for hours, developing our timeline as the sun dipped and night hid the mossy trees outside the second-story windows. We worked hard and worked well together.
Along the way, Rachel and Hernán wrote copious notes on Post-Its. Sticky arm-length paper and little green and purple squares heralded text such as “elderly access to internet,” “chatbots” and “What is open?”
Praise ensued when Hernán also wrote on the window as whiteboard real-estate dwindled. Visitors snapped photos, saying it looked like a TV scene. Gretchen Rubin herself liked a Tweet featuring our notes with her classification.
But Team Wright Square’s big moment came Sunday afternoon.
We won.
And the last-to-form team of four leftovers was pictured in the local newspaper.
The headline said “hackers” (as in Edward Snowden): “Hurricane hackers build a more prepared Savannah.”
I drank it up.
The words make it easier to believe I’m a developer, and such hackathon events make my steps into the tech world a little surer.
