A HackDays event from the Dev’s Perspective
[You can register for HackREGINA now by going to http://hackregina2012.eventbrite.com/]
I started working with Hackdays.ca shortly after attending their HackVAN event in Vancouver, BC. I attended their event with two of my co-workers, Herb and Willson. We had been scheming the last few days before the event about the application we were going to make using the sponsor APIs that hackdays.ca had just listed on the website. After trading ideas back and forth with some of our co-workers, someone had mentioned how they really would have liked an application to plan out a motorcycle road trip that they had recently gone on. Using YellowAPI and Google Maps, we had found our “killer app” 
We got to the Mozilla offices in downtown Vancouver around 8:30 AM and grabbed some breakfast snacks before joining everyone in the main developer area. Once everyone had settled, each sponsored API team gave a short presentation about their API, including what it’s currently used for, quick information on how to setup an account, and who to ask if there’s any questions. After those were completed, we got to work. We immediately setup a GitHub repository to share our code in, and the three of us broke up some tasks to complete – I was on the API calling side, Herb focused on the mapping functionality, and Willson was on layout and styling. We worked together really well, especially since we were on the same team at work and knew each other’s strengths beforehand.
Other participants at the hackathon were forming groups with their neighbors and hashing out ideas with one another. I found it amazing how quickly some teams got organized, developed an idea, and were ready to go, especially since they had just met each other in the last 30 minutes. I do think some of the teams that had attended the meetup the night before had a bit of an advantage, as they were able to find team members that had complimentary strengths, as well as meet some of the API teams that were there and get information in advance. But all in all, we were pretty confident in our idea and our ability to implement.
Some of the hackdays organizers were taking a quick survey of everyone’s applications to ensure there weren’t any duplicate apps being created, as well as to give others a chance to join an existing team if they hadn’t found anyone yet. Before we realized what time it was, at noon pizza was delivered! Surprisingly there wasn’t a mad rush for lunch though – everyone was too focused on their projects. Some teams even sent a team member to get food for everyone else! It was a great atmosphere to get work done – lots of collaboration and discussion, and the API sponsors were a great support to everyone.
We had a pretty solid working demo around 3 PM that day, but there were tons of little tweaks we wanted to add to our application. We were still in the middle of tweak #476 when the 5 o’clock alarm went off. Everyone quit working on their projects and grabbed a beer while the judges of the day were introduced. Each judge gave a short spiel about where they worked and their experience in the industry (and they were all hiring 
). After that, teams were drawn to present their applications. Each team got up and used the projector to demonstrate their applications to the crowd and judges. There were some great applications up there, including a phone-based translator, an application that tracked and invoiced support calls in real time, some apps that used a smartphone camera to search for product information online, and others. All in all there were 15 completed apps from all the teams at the event.
After everyone presented, the judges went off to deliberate. This was a great time to talk to other dev teams about their apps and exchange ideas on how the apps were implemented and what their plans for the apps were. The API sponsors also spent some time with the dev teams to exchange ideas and even approached a few teams to continue their work outside of the event. When the judges returned, they awarded the prizes – $200 apple store gift cards for 4th, 5th, and 6th, a kindle and gift card for 3rd, a iPad 2 for 2nd, and a macbook air for 1st! At the end of the day, we won 3rd place with our “PitStops” web application. The day ended with a wrap up party at a local pub.
The HackVAN event was a great time, and I hope to bring the same experience to the HackREGINA event on March 17th. You can register for the event now by going to http://hackregina2012.eventbrite.com/. Hope to see you there!
