My Unconventional Path to Hackathons

Hacking the hackathon.

On Friday, January 16, 2015, I got on a bus that I wasn't signed up for, to attend a a hackathon that had already rejected me. Twelve hours earlier, I hadn't heard of the event yet. I had an amazing weekend, and it was a ton of fun. Here's a timeline of my unconventional journey to PennApps.

Thursday, 7:38 p.m., simultaneous messages from two colleagues:

Want to go to PennApps? Don't worry about the waitlist, we can take care of it.

Thursday, 11:31 p.m.

We got you in. Just show up tomorrow play it cool on the bus.

Thursday, 11:51 p.m., an email to my boss:

Hey man, I'm gonna be away tomorrow. Sorry for the short notice. Here's my scrum update: […]

Friday, 8:17 a.m., on the PennApps bus:

You're not on the list. And you don't even go to this school. I was a last minute addition, <director> said I could take this bus. Fine. You'll have to let everyone else get on first.

Friday, 8:22 a.m.

You can get on.

Friday, 9:08 a.m.

Twelve hours ago you didn't even know you were going, and now you're on a bus to Philadelphia. Do you usually not tell your parents when you're leaving the country?

Friday, 11:48 a.m., near the Canadian-US border

We are now approaching the border. The border service agent will ask you what the purpose of your trip is. The purpose of your trip is a programming competition. Do NOT mention hackathon - they WILL freak out.

Friday, 11:59 a.m., Canadian-US border, American side

Just sent a snap of that American flag. I hope it sends, she's the only one in Canada who knows where I am right now.

Friday, 7:47 p.m., Somewhere at the University of Pennsylvania

Hey man, do you know where Irvine Hall is? Looking for PennApps? Yeah. Opening ceremonies is already over.

Friday, 8:38 p.m., Registration, PennApps

Hi, [organizer]. I'm on the waitlist, but my friend [teammate] said to talk to you to have that changed? Yeah, she told me. What's your name?

Friday, 8:40 p.m., Adminterface, pennapps.com Organizer changes me from Waitlist to Going.

Friday, 9:53 p.m., Parts Checkout, three hours since hacking started

Do you have any Estimotes left? We don't, sorry. Fuck. Shit. Fuck.

Saturday, 12:04 a.m., Zero lines of code written

Any other hack ideas? Nope. Well then. Let's go skating.

Saturday, 12:33 a.m., UPenn skating rink

How was the inspiration-skate? I've got an idea. Let's grab an Oculus.

Saturday, 3:48 a.m., Several GB of SDKs downloaded later

…This probably isn't possible on an unmodded Oculus. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. I'm going to sleep.

Saturday, 9:23 a.m., Towne 3rd floor, PennApps

Should I set up a GitHub repo? Nah. Save yourself the trouble of deleting an empty repo on Sunday night.

Saturday, 1:19 p.m., running an idea past the Postmates team

Awesome idea. This is the first time I've heard someone use the API like that. Great, thanks for the feedback. By the way, what about using it for prescription delivery? At least fifty other teams are already building that. Got it.

Saturday, 1:57 p.m., twenty minutes after we started hacking

I actually have no idea what I'm doing. Let's start over. Want to write it with Flask? I've never used Flask before. Let's do it.

Saturday, 4:30 p.m., a Skype message from my sister

I want to get a new, cheap phone. Thoughts on a N5? Good choice. Also can you tell mom that I went to Philadelphia for the weekend for a hackathon? Thanks.

Saturday, 10:38 p.m.

This isn't working out. Let's pivot. Again. We have less than twelve hours left. Exactly. We don't have enough time to finish this. Pivoting commenced.

Saturday, 11:45 p.m., deciding the domain name

Maybe something evokes 'spontaneity' and 'serendipity' or even 'serenity'? Yeah. Something that starts with an 's' sound and that doesn't have a harsh fricatives or tall letters. I'm not sure if you're sleep deprived or if I am, but I have no idea what you two are talking about.

Saturday, 11:58 p.m., still deciding the domain name

Spontaneity is definitely out. What? Why? Nobody knows how to spell it, including us.

Sunday, 12:03 a.m.

The people at the next table are giving us looks. Probably because we discussed the sound-feel and pronunciation of our domain for half an hour? Nah, that can't be it.

Sunday, 12:33 a.m., designing the UX of the landing page

I think we should have a one sentence tagline. Nah, three 'about us' bullet points is absolutely vital. You want to be clear. One line makes it feel more luxurious. It draws you in, makes you want more. Yeah, but three points conveys your message and explains it more effectively…

Sunday, 12:51 am, still talking about landing page copy text

They're definitely giving us weird looks now.

Sunday, 2:18 a.m., discussing our API

My API is like a roller coaster. Sometimes it gives you the data you want, and sometimes it gives you an internal server error and crashes node. That's one hell of an API. Or one hell of a roller coaster.

Sunday, 3:56 a.m.

I'm going to sleep. Wake me up in two hours.

Sunday, 9:27 a.m., writing the ChallengePost post

The post should be like a wishlist. As in, 'I wish I had implemented these APIs'.

Sunday, 9:30:00 a.m.

One tab of ChallengePost is telling me that I don't have permission to submit, and the other one is thanking me for my submission. At least we're not the only ones with no idea what's going on.

Sunday, 9:34 a.m., checking out the Postmates API tag on ChallengePost

We might have a chance at the Postmates API prize. How many are there? There are like four hundred other hacks. Oh.

Sunday, 10:49 a.m., running through the rain to the expo

My boots are ruined and gross from the rain. I'm just going to throw them out. Do you have other shoes you can wear? I'll just wear my flip flops till we get home. Sounds reasonable to me!

Sunday, 11:00 a.m., PennApps expo

Open the app both locally and on the website, on each of our computers. If one instance crashes, we can quickly switch to another screen. It's a good thing there's spotty connection in here. We six chances to blame it on the internet.

Sunday, 1:08 p.m., eating lunch

There's that loud girl from the bus. Doesn't she remind you of a cranky middle-aged woman? Exactly. The kind of person who is never satisfied. The kind that asks to speak to your manager -  This place is pretty echoey. She can definitely hear you guys. Oops. Good thing we don't have to take a 12 hour bus ride home with her, right?

Sunday, 10:38 p.m., five hours into the bus ride

Did we already drop off people from the other school? Yeah. It was when we were turning around a lot. The most impressive thing I've done this weekend was to sleep through that.

Monday, 1:12 a.m., Tim Hortons at the Duty Free Store

Just so you guys know, we're out of food, we're out of bagels and bakery stuff, and our machine is broken so no iced capps or frozen lemonades. What else do you even serve? Apple juice and hot water?

Monday, 1:25 a.m., near the US-Canadian border

We're a group of almost 40, and he is one border agent on graveyard shift by himself. Try not to be too loud or make sudden movements. Is he border patrol or a brown bear?

Monday, 1:30 a.m., Canadian Border Services

You guys were at a coding competition, huh? Does that involve Linux?

Monday, 4:07 a.m., Teammate's apartment

And we're back. Time to sleep for three hours, take the subway home, get changed, grab food, and then get to work 30 minutes early.