5 Brussels Codathon-ers

Meet five of the super awesome coders that joined us in Brussels!

Harun

1. Why did you choose to attend the event and what are you hoping to take away from the experience?
Because first of all, I wanted to be part of an organization of which the pure aim is to help people in need of help; secondly I am hoping to learn to be a team player and work with people, and finally produce something together. Also, get to know other people who are also in the coding field, and trying to help people through coding.

2. Is the event so far meeting your expectations?
Yes, it is actually. I am so happy to attend this event, and looking forward for the next!

3. What are you most enjoying about taking part in the Codeathon?
It is the thought that trying to solve some issues, build something for only helping people who need help.

4. Could you tell us a little about what you and your team are working on today?
We are working on the website of the Red Cross, each of us making different pages of the site, while one of us doing the styling part and the others creating the coding part of this design.

Caroline

1. Why did you choose to attend the event and what are you hoping to take away from the experience?
I’ve never done a hackathon before, but it’s a really nice experience for meeting people. I’m very happy to fight against my timidity, and I have new friends (I hope — sometimes i’m a little naive)!

2. Is the event so far meeting your expectations?
Yeah it really is, but I’m just a little disappointed that we can’t sleep here. For me, that’s somewhat the soul of a hackathon, so I would like to see that next time.

3. What are you most enjoying about taking part in the Codeathon?
For me, the best point is that I train my English and when I speak a other language, I’m more inhibited, so for me, it’s a really nice exercise and I’m really proud to practice to be better understood!

4. Could you tell us a little about what you and your team are working on today?
I’m working on the design for the website; I wanted to code, but I think I’m more useful here for Photoshop design work. It’s important to adapt to the situation.

Thomas

1. Why did you choose to attend the event and what are you hoping to take away from the experience?
I like to help people a lot, in my past I was very egotistical, and I really want to change that. Life is hard for everyone but for the last few years I’ve noticed that we complain for nothing, we don’t bother to look for it, or do it ourselves, we all want a solution already ready.

2. Is the event so far meeting your expectations?
Yes, I expected much worse, especially since everything is in English and I speak very little. I was really afraid I wouldn’t get anything.

3. What are you most enjoying about taking part in the Codeathon?
The fact of meeting people who have participated in Red Cross events, seeing photos, their experiences, knowing the procedure to follow in case of illness, epidemic, etc…. To understand that in our country we complain but we still have extreme comfort.

4. Could you tell us a little about what you and your team are working on today?
Today, my team worked on the design of the website, as well as making the site as attractive as possible, we added custom made images, and we made more fun menus.

Amandine

1. Why did you choose to attend the event and what are you hoping to take away from the experience?
I’ve never participated in such an event, so it was a new discovery for me and I was curious to know a little bit more about it. I was hoping to be helpful even if I’m a noob in app dev, and to learn new things.

2. Is the event so far meeting your expectations?
Yes it is!

3. What are you most enjoying about taking part in the Codeathon?
The collaboration and the knowledge sharing between developers. The energy and the good food too!

4. Could you tell us a little about what you and your team are working on today?
We are working on the app which allows users to fill a form to inform about the number of people from certain areas who are getting sick (with their symptoms). I’m currently trying to style it a little bit better.
Thank you for this amazing event and all your hard work guys!

Hamza

1. Why did you choose to attend the event and what are you hoping to take away from the experience?
The event looked interesting. It is also for a great purpose. By participating in the event, I hope that I will improve myself on different technologies, even if I didn’t use some of them before doing this Codeathon.

2. Is the event so far meeting your expectations?
Actually, I expected that people would be more focused on coding and nothing else, but they are open for discussions and exchange, which is really great!

3. What are you most enjoying about taking part in the Codeathon?
Having some responsibilities, helping others in any way possible.

4. Could you tell us a little about what you and your team are working on today?
We are working on an app that allows users to fill out a form on how many people in a certain area that are touched by a disease. After the form is filled, an SMS is automatically created based on the data entered by the user, and this message is sent to inform the Red Cross

Interviews conducted by BelCross Codeathon volunteer Tim Strange.