Geek Party: Tips for Attending a Hack-A-Thon

What are your words of wisdom? For most of my life, quotable words were for other people to use. Lately, I've been finding wisdom in other peoples' words, and making a few quotes of my own. The latest one was "Life is like a jigsaw puzzle, I'm fitting the pieces together." Yesterday and today, the jigsaw puzzle piece was a hack-a-thon. The AT&T Shape Hack-a-thon.

It occurs to me that not everyone knows what goes on at a hack-a-thon. I'm going to be letting the cat out of the bag about how fun they can be, and then EVERYONE is going to want to go. I should certainly keep my fingers still and my hands at my side. Yet here I am, writing about hack-a-thons. Sharing my tips with you to ease your fear of attending one.

You'll Get to Check Out New Spaces!

Most hack-a-thons are held at cool co-working spaces or corporate venues. I've attended three so far now.... at the Epson Corporate offices, at Cross Campus Pasadena, and now at Cross Campus in downtown Los Angeles. Parking was $6 for all day Sat or Sunday at one of the lots on Flower St. The entire floor was open space with tables, power, network hubs all around. If you were lucky, you scored one of the sofa areas for your team. 36 hours is a long time.

You Won't be Starving!

Most hack-a-thons have a generous flow of food. We walked in to breakfast of bagels, a variety of cream cheeses, danishes and coffee. Breakfast was cleaned up and replaced by lunch almost immediately, then afternoon snacks and dinner. This morning there were tofu sandwiches and vegetables, and at lunch time chicken masala with rice and roti, followed by snacks, pizza and more snacks. As I said. You won't be starving.

You Don't have to Stay the Entire Time

A feature of a hack-a-thon that might be intimidating is the duration of the event. This event started at 9:30 AM on Saturday and ended at 7:00 PM on Sunday. On my first hack-a-thon, the venue closed after 6 PM on Saturday. This event was open the entire duration. You didn't have to stay, though. I had some important things to do so I left and returned on Sunday.

You'll Make New Geek Friends

The most stand-out folks I met this weekend were the New Yorkers. They'd flown in for the event. After all there were big prizes and even bigger sponsors. Thousands of dollars to the winners in a number of categories, a chance to pitch your concept and share your skills in a public setting, in front of representatives of big, fun companies like IBM, DC, Warner Brothers, Amazon. I met two young entrepreneurs from Fullerton and Mid-Wilshire. They were high school students who've been doing contract development under their own brands. They met at an Apple coding focus event for high school aged girls. They planned on staying the entire time. All 36 hours. I met a family from San Gabriel who came as a team to work on the Watson interface. It's a big social 36 hours.

You'll See Old Geek Friends

I went with one of our college interns, and I met a friend who had gone to another with me some time ago.

You'll Learn New Stuff and Play with New Toys

The whole point of a hack-a-thon is often to engage developers with new sponsor technology. This one was about large content management systems and about virtual reality. The Oculus Rift was prominent, and the Robotis team loaned out the new Ollobot and gave away a play kit. There was other hardware, and lots of software environments.

You'll Need your Laptop

I shouldn't have to tell you that you'll need your laptop. It's a hack-a-thon, and they usually involve coding of some sort. Take your laptop.

Don't Be Afraid

If it's your first time, you may be intimidated by the thought that you might actually need to code. I''ll give you a hint. If you haven't ever seen the environment or the software, starting on the day of the event is probably going to be tricky. Still, use the opportunity to start learning, visualize your solution and try to implement something. And enjoy the party. Everyone there was a noob once...

Don't Judge Others

The other entries may not be great and yours may be amazing. Regardless of what they look like, please don't judge them. Be encouraging. Remember. You were a noob once, too!

Don't Have a Team?

Come anyway! Folks show up and team up with random strangers to solve as yet undecided projects. Or... just compete solo. A team of one.

To summarize. Just go. Have fun! Go alone or with a friend. Plan on learning. A lot. Take your laptop and revel your geekiness. There'll be lots of company.

The winning entries for the AT&T Shape Hack-A-Thon will be displayed at the AT&T Entertainment and Tech Convention next weekend (July 14-16 2017). You can view my entry as Squigglemom here.