Posted 12/09/2016

Girl Develop It! Hackathon

Girl Develop It! Hackathon was held on December 9-10, 2016 at Galvanize, Seattle location.

Coffee Mood was developed in a 30 hour period with a group of 4 young female developers. My group created a website to help people determine a person’s coffee selection based on their mood. I worked as a Front-End Developer and UX Designer on the project.

This was my first hackathon along with my earliest work in web development. Really, it was my first “formal” interaction with coding, webhooks, and APIs for that matter. Not knowing too much about coding or how approach a technical idea, I was initially hesitant to put myself out there. I definitely eased into it a bit more after pitches and seeing how any idea that may seem really basic actually requires a lot of work to run properly.

I thought I’d already a master on the things I learnt in the classroom. However, this hackathon really taught me a lot of thing I was blind to. The Importance of collaboration and learning how to approach and implement ideas were both huge learning curves in my development.

Here are my three takeaways from a hackathon:

1. Go to a Hackathon - they’re for EVERYONE!

Even you don’t have any technical knowledge, you still can provide value to your team. Every team needs someone to help with part of the project. I had very little coding under my belt when I went into the hackathon and boy, it helped me learn on the spot.

2. Ask lot of questions

Asking questions about the process, coding, or even the “stupid” questions are always welcome at a hackathon. Hackathon are an environment foster growth and innovation. Without asking questions, you’re losing the opportunity to learn something you didn’t know.

3. Small Wins

Our group got 4th place in the hackathon. No trophy, but it was the small wins of getting to learn something I didn’t know 48 hours before. I left the event with my win of learning about APIs, SVG files and wireframing with the help of my teammates and mentors.

ROLE

Front-End Developer, UX Designer

DATE OF EVENT

December 9-10, 2016

PROJECT DELIVERABLE

For the code, visit my Coffee Mood Github

Website Mockup

Header

Content

Drinks

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