Lessons learned at our last DCI Hackathon

You don’t know how much you’ve learned and can do until you apply it working in team in a competition. Once you do it, you feel very satisfied and are also able to find what you can improve on.

By Edalí Cárdenas / Fellow at DCI

A couple of weeks ago, the Digital Career Institute organized a Hackathon on the World Refugee Day. This friendly event was aimed at bringing together current students, former students and teachers to build some web and app projects in a few hours. It was cool because of the diversity of projects. Moreover, it was also a chance to find out how we can actually work on a team and solve problems under time pressure.

A few of the projects presented that day are as follows; there was a refugee panic button app, a database manager tool, a charity network platform, a video based dating app, a website with animations and music, a video game and an awesome app that creates music with twitter hashtags. This last one ended up being the winner of the night!

In my case, it was the second hackathon in which I have participated. I am still very new to programming. However, this time around I felt that I knew a little more. I joined the web development course in January so I already have notions on how to code with Javascript. And since all groups were mixed, we had the opportunity to work with beginners and more advanced students.

I can easily share how much fun we had during this event but I’d like to focus on telling you which are the most common challenges while participating in a hackathon at the school. Some of these may not be particular to hackathons where students participate but any hackathon in general.

With these tips you can make a plan before starting to code. In this way, you’ll perform better in a Hackathon.

1. Make sure you assign the roles needed to the right people.
2. Work with focus on a engaging frontend and a simple backend code that run properly to be shown in the final presentation.
3. Prepare your wire frames and models.
4. Break the steps into small tasks.
5. Write the tasks and make time to distribute them to the right team members.
6. Set the time to get the tasks done enough early before the time is over to test the project.
7. No matter the stage of progress, keep calm and never lose the winner mindset.

At the end of the day, you leave with several takeaways that are not only technical but also in the form of soft skills like working in team. Furthermore, you feel very happy and proud because you see what is possible to build in 7–8 hours. For us, students and staff of DCI the event is an opportunity where we can meet, work together and celebrate our little or big achievements.

Do not miss the chance to join next time! Follow DCI social media to get updates about future Hackathon events.