Impressions of girl's hacked on LinkedIn
It has been a day since I have been sleeping off and recovering from the hackathon of DevelopHer 2013, organized by LinkedIn on their campus in Mountain View. I am very glad that I took part in it, and so far the first impressions have not disappeared from my head, I want to share my observations and experience. Best of all, probably, the question-answer format will do. If I have missed something interesting, I will be happy to answer your questions at the end of the article. So:
- What was it?
“A hackathon is an event where a crowd of programmers voluntarily gathers to work on their projects, alone or in small groups, for days on end, within the stated theme. At the end of the work, the projects are submitted to other participants and / or judges. Hackatons are thematic, dedicated to a particular technology, sponsored by large corporations, and sometimes just spontaneous among friends. DevelopHer had no theme, but as the name suggests, only young ladies participated in it.
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“Were all programmers?”
- According to my feelings (there are no official statistics), 75% are programmers (mostly the front-end, but there was a lot of back-end), the remaining 25% are usability and designer, as well as marketers and other interesting characters who came to the hackathon pick a team to implement some of their ideas or puzzles. There were many pros from the industry - developers from LinkedIn, eBay, Apple. There were senior high schools, graduate students (PhD students), students of Hackbright Academy.
- Participation assumed the presence of a team?
- There were teams that were formed in advance. There were teams that found each other right on the spot. On the big blackboard were ads in the style of "we need a UI / UX expert for mobile applications." I was not confident in my abilities and did not want to “slow down” others, so I prepared the idea for my project in advance and participated solo. These were also.
- And what, really all day long knocked on the keyboard?
- Hackathon started at 5 pm Friday and ended at 4 pm Saturday. The first hour - registration, dating and selection of teams. At 6 pm - a brief greeting from the organizers and introductory information. At about 6:30 pm, everyone dispersed about the projects and the work began to boil. Those teams that were barely familiar with each other, for some time loudly discussed the emerging projects, agreeing on roles, tools and a common vision. We had to finish at 13:30 Saturday, after which the demonstrations and the final judging began. Thus, on the actual projects was given about 19 hours.
- What can I write in 19 hours?
- I was very interested in this question, so I watched with great interest the demonstrations of foreign projects, who did what and how the roles were distributed in the teams. This is the most interesting moment, perhaps: if you are just entering the industry (or returning after a long break, as in my case), participation in such events helps to “spy” the collective work of a large number of professionals at once. I was very inspired by this - how professionally many participants took “right off the bat” for the project and did it in time using the whole arsenal of tools (libraries, API, technologies).
The vast majority of projects were social web applications using the LinkedIn API, FourSquare, Facebook, Google Analytics, Google Maps, and so on. Percent 20 - social applications for smartphones. And all who passed to the finals, in principle, worked - demonstrated the declared functionality and at the same time looked quite usable. A large percentage of projects (according to my estimates - at least 40%) were services for recruiters and job seekers. Just some boom. There were a couple of toys and educational projects. There were practically no projects “programmers write something for programmers”. In my group (there were three preliminary referee boards for 27 projects, we were randomly divided into three groups), my project was the only one from this area. I wrote a series of widgets that modify and extend the capabilities of jQuery UI.
- What are you mostly writing about?
- Front-end: JavaScript, jQuery / jQuery UI, Bootstrap, Backbone and more, including a variety of APIs. Back-end: a very large variety - Scala, Ruby on Rails, Java, just do not bust, except to watch every project. By the way, here they are all (from those that were submitted to the judging). What caught my eye: the possession of an extensive set of tools. Considering that many teams were formed right on the spot: the idea could come to one participant, and the software part was implemented by another. And it so happened that any task was a set of tools that were suitable for this task. Server programmers must own a couple of libraries (Bootstrap, jQuery UI), which allows them to easily dock with the front end. The same goes for UI / UX designers. In the final selection there was even one solo project by a UX designer, who implemented her idea completely independently using Bootstrap / SQLAlchemy / LESS / jQuery / etc.
- Were there any restrictions on projects or tools?
- Yes. It was allowed to use only open technologies and open data. Restrictions on the subject was not. Projects should have been written from scratch. But I am sure, of course, that at least those who came to the hackathon team carefully prepared - thought through their projects, selected and studied the necessary libraries. My training was to create a project on github-e, fill it with fresh jQuery UI, and download a few free skins for web interfaces from the Internet to make it look like I’ve got something to pull on my widgets. Hands to the skins did not reach, well, okay.
- Can you elaborate on organizational issues? Did you eat pizza and drink coffee all night? And if you cut down in the morning, what did you do?
- LinkedIn took under the hackathon a spacious cafeteria of its headquarters. At our disposal were coffee machines, all kinds of tea, frozen yogurt with snacks, ready-made sandwiches in the fridge and all kinds of small snacks. Several times during the day brought breakfast lunches. At midnight, strawberries in chocolate and tiny cheesecakes fell on us.
It seemed to me that many did not sleep at all. Since I couldn’t really sleep well the night before, I gladly took advantage of the rest room, which we organized in one of the meeting rooms. There they threw giant cushion chairs, which was a pleasure to sleep in. About a dream I must say that it is important to calculate your strength and go and relax / sleep at the moment when you start to slip from fatigue in one place. I lost two hours so: after waking up from a four-hour sleep, I wiped it without understanding everything written in unproductive time and rewrote again in 20 minutes. We had to stop earlier.
What else is interesting on the organization: on Saturday a garden was organized for children, if someone needed it. During the hackathon, there were two sessions of yoga, one late in the evening and one in the morning. Yoga is said to be a typical attribute of girl hackathons. The second typical attribute is cupcakes. They, too, were right after we shut down the computers at 1:30. I really liked the professional work of the organizers! No one had to fight with the connection of laptops or phones to demonstration monitors - for this there were technicians who, without question, did everything right in an instant.
- And what is the age of the participants?
- Mostly 28–35 years old. Students, of course, younger - 20-28. Several participants aged about 50; what is interesting, almost all of them passed the qualifying refereeing and got into the final.
- Who are the judges?
- The final judging was carried out (I realized that only now ... that’s what a sleepy brain means!) LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn corporate vice president Shannon Stough and the leaders of two other IT companies. Behind Jeff, a charming five-year-old daughter drew some funny animals, then listened very attentively to the presentations, climbing into his arms.
- What gives participation in this event? Why you can not lock yourself at home for 24 hours and do the same thing next to the monitor, refrigerator and bed?
- Of course it is possible. I think that for those who want to grow seriously in the chosen area, it is not just possible to do this, but also to periodically. But hakaton gives additional bonuses and at each level of professional development they are their own. Beginners, like me, get a clearer idea of ​​what to strive for. Pros and ambitious graduate students compete for prizes (the winners received by MacBook Air). For some, this is a chance to learn more about the organizing company and more confidently submit their application for a vacancy. Each has its own goals and interest.
- If there are all such cool professionals, then why is this segregation by gender?
- Well, firstly, not all the participants are accomplished professionals. As you know, help is much easier to take and its effectiveness is higher when it comes from a person who is closer to you in society. The same applies to role-playing examples. Therefore, if you want to gain confidence in your abilities, it makes sense to start with what is closer to you. In addition, work in predominantly male teams does not give an understanding of what we really are as professionals, if we “remove all men.” Again, each has its own considerations. About a hundred people took part in the hackathon, so it can be said that no matter what goals we all set, this event was in demand.
I am pleased to take part in this hackathon next year, as well as in other thematic and general ones. And in a year I hope to compete for the prizes! I would be glad to participate in such a hackathon in Russia: in my native Ulyanovsk, hackathons are also gaining popularity and it would be great if once a year (yes, even on the eighth of March!) And something similar was done with us.
- What was it?
“A hackathon is an event where a crowd of programmers voluntarily gathers to work on their projects, alone or in small groups, for days on end, within the stated theme. At the end of the work, the projects are submitted to other participants and / or judges. Hackatons are thematic, dedicated to a particular technology, sponsored by large corporations, and sometimes just spontaneous among friends. DevelopHer had no theme, but as the name suggests, only young ladies participated in it.
')
“Were all programmers?”
- According to my feelings (there are no official statistics), 75% are programmers (mostly the front-end, but there was a lot of back-end), the remaining 25% are usability and designer, as well as marketers and other interesting characters who came to the hackathon pick a team to implement some of their ideas or puzzles. There were many pros from the industry - developers from LinkedIn, eBay, Apple. There were senior high schools, graduate students (PhD students), students of Hackbright Academy.
- Participation assumed the presence of a team?
- There were teams that were formed in advance. There were teams that found each other right on the spot. On the big blackboard were ads in the style of "we need a UI / UX expert for mobile applications." I was not confident in my abilities and did not want to “slow down” others, so I prepared the idea for my project in advance and participated solo. These were also.
- And what, really all day long knocked on the keyboard?
- Hackathon started at 5 pm Friday and ended at 4 pm Saturday. The first hour - registration, dating and selection of teams. At 6 pm - a brief greeting from the organizers and introductory information. At about 6:30 pm, everyone dispersed about the projects and the work began to boil. Those teams that were barely familiar with each other, for some time loudly discussed the emerging projects, agreeing on roles, tools and a common vision. We had to finish at 13:30 Saturday, after which the demonstrations and the final judging began. Thus, on the actual projects was given about 19 hours.
- What can I write in 19 hours?
- I was very interested in this question, so I watched with great interest the demonstrations of foreign projects, who did what and how the roles were distributed in the teams. This is the most interesting moment, perhaps: if you are just entering the industry (or returning after a long break, as in my case), participation in such events helps to “spy” the collective work of a large number of professionals at once. I was very inspired by this - how professionally many participants took “right off the bat” for the project and did it in time using the whole arsenal of tools (libraries, API, technologies).
The vast majority of projects were social web applications using the LinkedIn API, FourSquare, Facebook, Google Analytics, Google Maps, and so on. Percent 20 - social applications for smartphones. And all who passed to the finals, in principle, worked - demonstrated the declared functionality and at the same time looked quite usable. A large percentage of projects (according to my estimates - at least 40%) were services for recruiters and job seekers. Just some boom. There were a couple of toys and educational projects. There were practically no projects “programmers write something for programmers”. In my group (there were three preliminary referee boards for 27 projects, we were randomly divided into three groups), my project was the only one from this area. I wrote a series of widgets that modify and extend the capabilities of jQuery UI.
- What are you mostly writing about?
- Front-end: JavaScript, jQuery / jQuery UI, Bootstrap, Backbone and more, including a variety of APIs. Back-end: a very large variety - Scala, Ruby on Rails, Java, just do not bust, except to watch every project. By the way, here they are all (from those that were submitted to the judging). What caught my eye: the possession of an extensive set of tools. Considering that many teams were formed right on the spot: the idea could come to one participant, and the software part was implemented by another. And it so happened that any task was a set of tools that were suitable for this task. Server programmers must own a couple of libraries (Bootstrap, jQuery UI), which allows them to easily dock with the front end. The same goes for UI / UX designers. In the final selection there was even one solo project by a UX designer, who implemented her idea completely independently using Bootstrap / SQLAlchemy / LESS / jQuery / etc.
- Were there any restrictions on projects or tools?
- Yes. It was allowed to use only open technologies and open data. Restrictions on the subject was not. Projects should have been written from scratch. But I am sure, of course, that at least those who came to the hackathon team carefully prepared - thought through their projects, selected and studied the necessary libraries. My training was to create a project on github-e, fill it with fresh jQuery UI, and download a few free skins for web interfaces from the Internet to make it look like I’ve got something to pull on my widgets. Hands to the skins did not reach, well, okay.
- Can you elaborate on organizational issues? Did you eat pizza and drink coffee all night? And if you cut down in the morning, what did you do?
- LinkedIn took under the hackathon a spacious cafeteria of its headquarters. At our disposal were coffee machines, all kinds of tea, frozen yogurt with snacks, ready-made sandwiches in the fridge and all kinds of small snacks. Several times during the day brought breakfast lunches. At midnight, strawberries in chocolate and tiny cheesecakes fell on us.
It seemed to me that many did not sleep at all. Since I couldn’t really sleep well the night before, I gladly took advantage of the rest room, which we organized in one of the meeting rooms. There they threw giant cushion chairs, which was a pleasure to sleep in. About a dream I must say that it is important to calculate your strength and go and relax / sleep at the moment when you start to slip from fatigue in one place. I lost two hours so: after waking up from a four-hour sleep, I wiped it without understanding everything written in unproductive time and rewrote again in 20 minutes. We had to stop earlier.
What else is interesting on the organization: on Saturday a garden was organized for children, if someone needed it. During the hackathon, there were two sessions of yoga, one late in the evening and one in the morning. Yoga is said to be a typical attribute of girl hackathons. The second typical attribute is cupcakes. They, too, were right after we shut down the computers at 1:30. I really liked the professional work of the organizers! No one had to fight with the connection of laptops or phones to demonstration monitors - for this there were technicians who, without question, did everything right in an instant.
- And what is the age of the participants?
- Mostly 28–35 years old. Students, of course, younger - 20-28. Several participants aged about 50; what is interesting, almost all of them passed the qualifying refereeing and got into the final.
- Who are the judges?
- The final judging was carried out (I realized that only now ... that’s what a sleepy brain means!) LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn corporate vice president Shannon Stough and the leaders of two other IT companies. Behind Jeff, a charming five-year-old daughter drew some funny animals, then listened very attentively to the presentations, climbing into his arms.
- What gives participation in this event? Why you can not lock yourself at home for 24 hours and do the same thing next to the monitor, refrigerator and bed?
- Of course it is possible. I think that for those who want to grow seriously in the chosen area, it is not just possible to do this, but also to periodically. But hakaton gives additional bonuses and at each level of professional development they are their own. Beginners, like me, get a clearer idea of ​​what to strive for. Pros and ambitious graduate students compete for prizes (the winners received by MacBook Air). For some, this is a chance to learn more about the organizing company and more confidently submit their application for a vacancy. Each has its own goals and interest.
- If there are all such cool professionals, then why is this segregation by gender?
- Well, firstly, not all the participants are accomplished professionals. As you know, help is much easier to take and its effectiveness is higher when it comes from a person who is closer to you in society. The same applies to role-playing examples. Therefore, if you want to gain confidence in your abilities, it makes sense to start with what is closer to you. In addition, work in predominantly male teams does not give an understanding of what we really are as professionals, if we “remove all men.” Again, each has its own considerations. About a hundred people took part in the hackathon, so it can be said that no matter what goals we all set, this event was in demand.
I am pleased to take part in this hackathon next year, as well as in other thematic and general ones. And in a year I hope to compete for the prizes! I would be glad to participate in such a hackathon in Russia: in my native Ulyanovsk, hackathons are also gaining popularity and it would be great if once a year (yes, even on the eighth of March!) And something similar was done with us.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/199308/
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