AppHACK by AngelHACK
Another hackathon attended by yours truly, but this time I left with a bit of a sour taste in the back of my mouth: I felt like it did not live up to the previous one..
Let's start from the beginning.
I arrived at 9.00AM on a beautiful Saturday morning to (once again) the Level39 office in Canary Wharf, armed with my best intentions and hopes that it would be another great and unforgettable hack-a-ton! Last time we hacked what was the prototype of nibbli and also other stuff!
Arrived and greeted by rubber ducks of all size
This time, unlike Battlehack, there was only one pad that had been set up as hacking space. Maybe it was because there were less participants due to another 2 other hackathons overlapping with this one. It felt a little upsetting not being able to hack on bean bags this time!
# Set up
So here we were in a big room with a lot of rounded or square tables: To encourage people to hack together in groups but the chairs, oh the chairs! Not the best things to sit on...not for for 24h.
After a quick intro by one of the organisers and a quick overview of the events sponsors, some people decided to get on stage and pitch their ideas and look for members to form a team with. Straight after that the hacking begun! There was no formal video/presentation of each person like I have seen in the past: Some people who weren't coders or designers had a hard time finding a team. One of the great guys I have met at the hackathon this time was one of the them..so I decided to join him and create a duo, which quickly evolved into a three-man team!
Surely this could have been thought out a bit better - maybe have a platform to match ideas to hackers.
I was and still am aware there is a platform created by the organisers of the AngelHACK events to do this, but for obscure reasons no one mentioned about this until the last few hours on the Sunday, before the demos begun.
Small and Big crews at AppHACK
# Food
You won't believe it but the food this time wasn't that great, overcooked lasagne over dinner and soup with bread over lunch the day after. But that's okay I guess..However what really hit me was that the vegetarian option ran out in 30 seconds! It was some kind of veggie pizza! I really felt bad for those who follow a specific diet or just don't like meat!
# Solo projects
I usually don't like to take a side on this kind of stuff. Everyone is different but I think that there's so much more to learn and experience by hacking in a team. However this time there were a bunch of solo projects, might as well just code from the comfiness of your sofa/couch/desk home?
# Presenting preparation
Horror Story! No projector testing and what really went unsmoothly was the fact that all demos and presentation ran overtime! Instead of cutting the speaker for fairness of all other participant the jury allowed the speakers to demo and present. I don't think that should be allowed: Rules are rules. Like the Romans said in latin "Lex dura sed lex" ( nice touch eh!)
# 24h rule
Once again a few demos and teams felt like they did not hack their stuff in 24h - it felt like some people actually had prepared work beforehand, before even coming to the hackathon. Some of the demos were way too strong in terms of tech and setup to be considered hacks, more like, beta products of potential startups! Why was there no one monitoring teams and do a check list of what people had achieved every 6hours? I really would be interested in following the git commit history of some people!
# Judges
I really was hoping this time the panel of judges would have been a tad more tech focused, instead there were businessy people. People that did not care about the technology and the efforts of each presenting team but rather whether the idea was viable for commercialisation and whether it would make money! Caught by the moment and my desire to disrupt the demo process I tweeted
Who gives a sh- if you can't make money out of your idea, it's a HACKATON not an Incubator screening process #AngelHackLON
— orliesaurus (@orliesaurus)
October 27, 2013
# Winners
The winners of a hackathon were selected (I supposed) for the viability of their product, the winners of the sponsored prizes were selected amongst the many teams that used the sponsors' API. Basically whoever had spent most time implementing the API won something. And that's really okay, that's why there are such prizes!
I really have to say it could have been a much better event if Greg (the founder of AngelHACK) was around, there was a lack of energy and preparation from the organisers, although I have to give a round of applause to the volunteers that really tried really hard to turn an awkward event into something memorable