Do I want to share this? Maybe 🙂

I always say people do not share their failures so it will be hypocritical of me to do the same thing. Okay, so I participated in two Hackathons. Did I win? NOPE! But I got a $50 Amazon gift card – which is not bad. I’ll use it to get some books I’ve been wanting to read.

The Hackathons

The two hackathons are: 

1. A worthy web challenge (Hackathon Link): “Build a web app that will make the world a better place. It can be an app that impacts the world or a local community. Goodness no matter the scope is good… What will help is following the rules! Your app must include either a Telerik UI for Blazor, Kendo UI for Angular or KendoReact UI component (or more than one – we promise we won’t complain). And it must do or promote goodness.”

2. Templates for Whiteboards for Jira/Confluence Competition (Hackathon Link): “Design a new experience for teams working in Jira or Confluence. No coding skills are required.”

 

A Worthy Web 

For this hackathon, I had to learn react. Plus I had never used Kendo React UI components before so that was a lot. I tried to build the Saraiapp as a Single Page Application. I added Videos to the project and I created the APIs using Laravel. 

Tutorials I watched

I ran into an error regarding CORS (Access to fetch at….from origin….has been blocked). Found the fix in another tutorial (here)

This tutorial by Coding Addict was super helpful. I really like how he teaches and you should definitely watch it.

P.S. I did not get to finish it. Watched enough to understand the basic concepts.

 

Screenshots

Looking at this, I did not style the components as well as I should have. I felt the ListView Paging Component would have been perfectly suited for the Guides page but I had issues with it.

What I could have done better? I should have followed the initial plan of designing the template for the project with dummy data. With this, I could have used all the right components, styled them, and then worry about the API.

I was overwhelmed and when that happens, I go off track and make a mess. 

I would not have submitted this but I already registered for the hackathon and I promised myself I’ll always finish what I start.

 

Templates for Whiteboards

For this, I just wanted to create a template for teams with no experience in building a startup. After Hack the normal, we had to work on our POC (proof of concept) and with our diverse experiences, it was difficult to decide on the right path to take. I felt if we had a template/whiteboard that helps with decision making, and shows what to do at each stage, we would have been able to conclude quicker. 

I had high hopes with this one, I am not going to lie. I am contemplating asking for feedback to see what I could have done better. In my opinion, I should have narrowed down the idea and focused on one area. 

But the board was part of ’30 eligible projects’ and I got a $50 Amazon gift card. Our people say ‘at all at all, na him bad’.

Looking back, I just talked through the board and did not demonstrate how to use it *facepalm*

Overview and Screenshots

If you have never worked with or on a startup project before, then you know how frustrating it is as a new founder. Yes the resource is online but there’s so much information and it can be overwhelming (I should have used this for my pitch…ish). For a new (inexperienced) team, not having a clear roadmap can lead to delays in decision-making. 

The Startup Board is made up of 5 components/sections. Teams can assign colors to each member and write their ideas down on stickies.

1. The Idea: Come up with the idea, create user personas, and list features
2. Business: Analyse strength and weaknesses of competitors, re-work features from the idea section, marketing strategy, monetization strategy, and business model canvas
3. Let’s Build: Sketch ideas for the wireframe, pick a wireframing and prototyping tool, pick features for MVP and group them into: important and can wait, decide on tools (tech-stack) needed to build the MVP
4. The Team: Analyse the teams and their skill, assign roles
5. Bonus and Resources: This section should help the team decide on the social media platform they’ll use. Plan their social media strategy, content ideas for the startup/project, how to pitch, and a list of resources (example sites to get free high-quality images)

In each section, I add links to youtube videos, images, or articles to help the team understand better. For example, I added an image to show the Uber Business Model Canvas. This should give an idea of what a business model canvas is and what you should do.

Conclusion

For me, it’s not even about the prize. I did not put in enough effort. I had enough time to figure ‘react’ out for the’ Worthy web challenge’ and get to work, but I kept on procrastinating. So that stings! I know I could have built something way better but I did not. 

I cannot dwell on this, on to the next one. I feel better now that I’ve ‘poured out my heart’. Writing really helps 🙂

Wait…

Reading through this I think I did well o. I feel like eating something sweet to celebrate but I’m fasting (Intermittent fasting) and I’m trying to lose weight so I’ll just drink warm water instead.