Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. - Samuel Beckett
Today is my first experience participating in a hackathon event. The Social Network, Facebook, held one at the Thamrin Nine Ballroom, Jakarta.
I wonder if the event should be called hackasprint, instead of hackathon. You only have 6 hour to come up with the app using facebook APIs.
The event itself was quite interesting, the facebook guys were kind and helpful, the food and beverages were nice.
The judges (Shinta bubu, Erik Meijer, XL representative, and a senior iOS developer) pick a team who built an app called DoSomething as the overall winner. The app is a tool to share what activities you’re doing and where you do it.
A little advice to you guys if you want to participate on another hackathon, it is very helpful if you solidify your idea and team from before the D-Day. So you can maximize the hackathon time to purely coding, not debating. Today we spent almost two hour to decide what to build, and in the end we don’t have much time to finish our app properly.
But even in the restrained time, our team can come up with a web API, a half-finished iPhone app, and a nice facebook feature addition to existing bango app. Not bad. Kudos to my colleagues. I believe if the time’s much longer we can launch a fully operating and interesting app.
Lesson learned. See you again on the next hackathon event! :)