[Note To Self]

I’ve been slacking as of late and no, I don’t mean the gif war in the the Slack channel!

One of these days, I’d like to go into a hackathon with a game plan and a team because I’m still awkward with meeting new people.  But I’ve done two hackathons so far… and have entered both with neither.  Maybe the third time will be the charm?  Anyway…

Earlier this month, I participated in the HackHLTH hackathon.  From the event website:

HackHLTH is the premier hackathon for the healthcare ecosystem, bringing together the most passionate developers, designers, and entrepreneurs with the most forward thinking sponsors, to solve the industry’s toughest problems.

If you’d like to know about the different sponsor challenges, you can check out this link:
https://hlth.co/hackhlth/

I managed to find a team through the facilitator’s team finding/building exercise which wasn’t really an exercise and was more like cramming us all deep into personal bubbles and telling us to have at it.  I was wedged up next to Nick, who I’d met before at a ReactVegas MeetUp, and his friend, Nic.

Listen… if someone tells you their idea is something that’s in the vein of Chat Roulette, but for doctors and patients?  You join that team!  And maybe, you try to make a polite escape from the overly enthusiastic gentleman who went WAY over his time of 15 seconds to get you hooked (No pun intended… but a terrible joke anyway…) on his idea for dealing with the opioid crisis.

We spent most of the day in breakout sessions with the event sponsors.  They demonstrated the tech they had made available for the hackathon and answered a bunch of our questions.  I watched Nick do A LOT of the coding while we were in those sessions.  I’m still at that stage where I have to sit myself down to focus.  I know that everyone codes differently, but it’s still pretty neat to see it, you know?

Did I mention that this event was held at the Aria and all the meals were provided?  Sometimes, the best meals are the ones that you don’t have to cook!

What can I tell you about working with Nick and Nic?  Cool dudes, incredibly patient, didn’t mind my somewhat klepto shenanigans…  I wish I’d been a better teammate.  Why?  Well, I’d been tasked with working on the web app.  I was trying to add in a real-time video feature.  I played with the example code, just to get a feel for it.  It worked fine on its own, but wouldn’t work when we put it into our app.  We weren’t able to get that part to work and honestly, I’m still trying to not be bugged by it.  It contributes to the impostor syndrome and all…

What could I have done differently?

Well… I would have registered for the event a week or two in advance.  One of my friends had sent me the info a while back, but I forgot about it.  Seriously, if I don’t write it in my bullet journal, I forget shit.  I registered for the hackathon just a few days before it started.  I skimmed the e-mail, figuring that I’d have a better idea what to do, day of,  you know?  What I missed was more info about the sponsor challenges and the links to their technology.  I would’ve had more time to play with their code and would probably have a better understanding of it, heading into the hackathon.

In the meantime…

I’m still working on Icebreaker and still looking for a job.  I’m heading to a networking and coding challenge thing tonight and I’m really looking forward to that.  Summer is coming and it’s time to get that summer bo-

Just kidding! I sunburn pretty easily and I have a bum ankle!  If I’m not yelling at my garden, I’ll be indoors… working on being a better programmer AND cooking.  It’s about balance, folks.  That’s what Thanos intended.