I love hackathons, you get to meet peoples that, just like you, want to learn new things, share ideas and collaborate on meaningful projects.You will make new friends and sometimes build strong professional relationships.
My first hackathon was the Victorian Budget Hack 2016, organized by Code for Australia. We have been given a ‘How might we’ question to tackle; “How might we best visualize, use and leverage the Victorian Government’s 2015 budget”. The second one was Techfugee, with a clear problem, helping asylum seeker & refugee families settle into the Australian community, my team submission won People’s Choice Award. After two successful weekends of hacking and learning, I was looking for more, so I joined the NASA Space App Challenge at Melbourne’s Carlton Connect, then later on Govhack 2016 in Sydney and the Smart Cities Hackathon at the ITS World Congress 2016.
I enjoyed most of those events, some are more engaging and fun than others. My first experience designing a User Experience was at Techfugee. I tried VR for the first time and build a hardware project for NASA Space app and I learned about mapping and data viz during Govhack.
Hackathon takes times, energy and sometimes money, some are asking you to work all night when others are more sustainable, I’m still looking for the best formula to get the most out of participant while giving back to them, and I’m not talking about branded t-shirts.
People need to understand that hackathons are for everyone, the word ‘hack’ isn’t the property of coders and engineers, everyone should join and jam together to make a better future for humanities.