Hackathon #2 — The year of united forces
What happens when you have Lawyers and Developers working together
We speak different languages, we really do. I even think that our brains function differently. I still don’t have a clue how the developers understood us when we were describing — “If the value exceeds 100.000 denars besides the reward of 2.100, 2% is charged for each commencement over 100.000 denars, but no more than 18.000 denars...” Complicated right?
But let’s rewind few weeks earlier to the day a local lawyer and a local techie geek drank a local beer, in a local bar.
Community and collaboration above all
Driven by the same enthusiasm — to help the community and improve it, I thought about an idea that a colleague of mine was talking about way back. She was talking about the complexity of the tariffs for expenses that occur in legal procedures (if you want to buy a house or an apartment), and how cool it would be if there is a calculator that estimates such expenses.
-Yes indeed that is cool!
Needed no more explaining, my geeky friend called up a meeting of the WeTalkIT community, and called us (Skopje Legal Hackers) to present the idea to the other developers and see if they feel the same about realizing this calculator as a project on their second Hackathon.
Pivoting!
Like any other idea, after sharing it with multiple people, and getting feedback from them, it turned out that instead of one procedure, it can be an amazing feature if we can actually implement every tariff there is, of whichever procedure you want.
So, why not do it?
Hackthon fun, Bugs, Dynamic things and Designs
We got some space support from the Seavus Incubator and we got down to work. However, instead of a weekend project it turned out to be much more complex.
Back-end code needed more time, since everything they made is dynamic (no idea what that means, but I heard the developers talking); designs needed to be finished; apps to be developed; bugs to be fixed. I was wondering why they were “wasting” their time to analyze, draw, code, market.
It was a first time for me to see all these 20+ different brains, with different expertise, using different terminology to collaborate in such a smooth way, respect each other and have fun.
Different backgrounds and personalities
What really amazed me, besides the solution, were the people.
On the hackathon we had: front-end and back-end developers, Android app developer, IOS app developer, designers, marketers, lawyers, notaries and more people with a law degree and practice in the procedures.
The end result
And voila — The calculator was created. It is out there, it can be edited, updated, extended with new procedures, and even with different values, variables etc.
You can find and make use of it on the official web application, Android or iOS app. Yes, we succeeded to finish all three of them.
You can also watch our promo video — courtesy of Darko Lekovski.
The power of community and support can ensue a preponderance of positive effects on our society, us as people participating in projects like this and to the general public for which we are creating our projects.
Farewell till the next project.
Thank you for reading my story.
