#hacktech

This weekend I attended the first annual HackTech hackathon in Santa Monica, California. It was a solid hackathon and I’d like to take the chance to share the project that I worked on, as well as some of my thoughts about the event itself.

The project

Amio was a brainchild that I had been nursing for a couple of weeks before the hackathon. It all started this summer when I was interning at Apple. I was living in corporate housing with a couple fellow interns, and generally we got along really well.

But throughout the summer, one thing just kept coming up as a friction point: milk. We decided early-on to share our milk purchases– nothing too new or crazy there. But week after week we’d go sans milk because nobody knew whose turn it was to buy the milk, or if someone had already bought milk recently.

So I thought: if only there existed an app where you could input all of the chores and shared tasks (like buying milk) that a couple of roommates might want to fairly share, and it would automatically keep track of whose turn it was to perform that task. Not only this, but if you open the fridge and notice that the milk is gone, wouldn’t it be great if you could immediately notify the person responsible for the next one?

So when some friends and I were looking for a good idea to run with for this hackathon, we decided to solve this common little annoyance, and thus Amio was born.

I paired up with a friend of mine, and we got to work on the app. I won’t bore you with the technical details, but if you’re interested in the source code you can find it on my github.

One thing I would like to mention, however, is that we focused ourselves on making the UI look and feel fantastic. We argued vehemently about views, actions, settings, and colors.

To be honest, the functionality of the app is simple. It’s pretty much just a project management app with very limited task management. There are dozens, if not hundreds of apps that allow you to do exactly what Amio allows you to do. But what Amio has, I like to think, that makes it actually a pretty viable app is a laser focus on optimizing for a very specific use-case.

I’d like to give a shout-out to Jesse, who was my co-developer for the project. He handled the visual design of the application and the view implementation, while I handled the backend and app logic. Also some props to DanielandKabir who fully intended to help out with the project, but weren’t able to due to technical issues.

Oh, and by the way, Jesse and I fully plan on taking this app through to the finish line and putting it on the App Store, so look out for that.

The event

As far as hackathons go, HackTech had some major strengths and some glaring weaknesses. In all, it was a solid event, and I can definitely appreciate the time and effort that went in to planning and executing it.

Pros

• This event had over 1,000 student developers. Damn. Nothing makes me happier than seeing people my age putting their homework aside to do something real.
• The venue was fantastic. With over 1,000 developers, I was assuming space would be an issue, but there was room to spare. That’s important when you consider that almost everyone needed a spot on the floor to catch the occasional much needed, and much deserved, power-nap.
• The sponsor list was long and loaded. Pebble was there sporting 50%-off refurb devices in an effort to further populate their upcoming Pebble-specific app store release. Even though my app had nothing to do with Pebble, I snagged one and I’m super excited to dig into it.

Cons

• Internet. It’s pretty typical for hackathons to have spotty WiFi, but this was admittedly pretty horrible. Apparently it was more because of all of the WiFi hotspots than the incoming bandwidth, but either way, it was a big issue.
• Food. Again, much love to the HackTech folks, but this is crucial. Finding food for 1,000 people is tough, but frankly it’s only customary to have an unlimited supply of energy drinks, soda, coffee, snacks and sweets at a hackathon. The meals were great, but the supply of snacks and drinks was almost non-existent.

In all, it was an awesome event. Hackathons are a fantastic way to learn, build, and discover. I’m excited to keep working on Amio, and I’m excitedly waiting for my next hackathon.