Hackathon: TechTogether Boston

iOS app
Last weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in Boston's largest all-female and non-binary hackathon! A group of friends and I wanted to digest as much tech and nerd information as possible, and we basically made it our mission to go to nearly every workshop session offered for two days straight. I don't know how we managed this but we did.

From 5p on Friday and all day on Saturday, it seemed I bounced from one room to the next with a nap here and there. There was a workshop on rapid prototyping with AdobeXD -- which I am in love with. Then, I was able to create my first phone application during a workshop on iOS app development with Swift (it's much easier than I had imagined), followed by a workshop at 2am on Android app development. For my very first hackathon-conference, I wanted to focus on skill development and learning, rather than the competition. However, seeing everyone so wrapped up in their individual designs and programming really inspired me to think about future hackathons or competing next year.
AdobeXD Tutorial

For now, I was very content in learning how to "Hack with AI" using Microsoft's Azure and learning from Dell representatives how to build a chatbot with Amazon Web Services. Sometimes a BU student would lead a workshop (such as the "Intro to Web development using React") while, at other times, a professional would direct the tutorials: the director Shayna Cummings from Women Who Code - Boston showed us "The One-Hour Web Site."


Actually, for a 1-hour workshop, there was a lot of information packed in each, but I hope to go back and finish all of the tutorials I couldn't in those sessions. For workshops like Introduction to Hardware and/or Robotics" and "Intro to Reinforcement learning," the level of mathematics, programming, and/or electronics knowledge needed could not be covered in the hour. It would have been nice to be able to complete more simple, hands-on projects during that time, but I have to commend the presenters for attempting to size-down really complex concepts into bit-size lectures. Some workshops, like Mathworks' "Hands on with Deep Learning and IoT," were an absolute success. It was almost the perfect balance between hands-on, project building and lecture explanations. And, for "Intro to Design Thinking," it was great to review key concepts and come back to life with a group activity unlike the other workshops -- as well as see another Wellesley alum there leading it.

All in all, I had a great time! I now have a bit of the hackathon bug and cannot wait to dive into the BUild Lab's 2019 Global Impact Challenge in mid-April.

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