Every hackathon that i have attended to is a new experience, with different set of expectations and ideas ('personalized' app concept is always there all the time). This hackathon is a little bit more reserved or small scaled as I would say. This hack event wasn't that well known in my circle of SG hacker friends. I wouldn't see this hack event, if not for eventbrite, and the reason i visited eventbrite was to checkout UP Singapore Clean and Green hackathon which was scheduled on the same day. There were only around 12 teams that presented in the finals and some didn't even have a working prototype, some are even slide decks. Based on my experience the event meets my average expectation, in terms of preparation and amenities. I was just a bit disappointed, that I wasn't able to see more hard hitting ideas and innovation during this event. Is it because of the theme? Or hackers? Event Timing or Did less people in the community knew about this event.
The Digital Media Hack 2014 has presented a theme of "Content Search and Discovery" and it was held in Microsoft office near Raffles, Singapore. They food and venue were great, there were some freebies from the sponsors "no event t-shirts though (I'm used to have one, based on the other hackevents that I have attended lol) and the usual hackathon survival kit (toothbrush and stuff) ". They have introduced minor talks and training as well, which is wonderful for some attendees since this is what the actually signup for. The organizers where nice and accommodating, I was able to talk with one of the founders and her visions for this event. This event focuses more on business model, rather than technical edge, which is rather good for our team.
Before attending this event I know, it will be a difficult win, "btw we didn't win anything as I predicted..". I came in unprepared, I even have to work on the Sunday morning and it took us like half of our first day identifying our concept. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the event and I really like my team. It was a team composed of all middle aged 26-31 individuals, composed of an ex-journalist-banker-freelancer, a business analyst, a medical engineer-consultant-developer and an architect. Based on the line up it is so diverse which is a double-edge lead. It was difficult to keep the entire team aligned, I also have difficulties expressing control (which I am not really good at). During Saturday dinner, I decided that I'll just chill out and just enjoy the moment and event. We talked and discussed our ideas and topics, we also talked about our personal project and goals. It was amazing, knowing people from these sets of background. Three of my teammates went back home to rest, One of my teammate who stayed slept. At 12am during the unholy hour of the night, this is the time I said to myself, Lets Get-it On! Being on solo and focused mode while drinking my 7th beer. I created a quick web application and mobile web app, which I forked from my other projects. I have also created a working prototype (which by the way i haven't shown my team mates during the event, because its a complex data set and algo and might raise their expectation on integrating that thing to the prototype - it is bad news since it might add more work). It was like magic, I also get this sense of fulfillment when I achieve or finish something during the hack.
Finished with the hack around 2:30AM, I slept opposite to my team mates room. I woke up around 4:30AM and 5:30AM onwards to work on some items. I was the weekend support and needed to do minor verification. The rest of the morning it was more like a casual gathering, and realized how insanely rich my team mate was. She lived in a completely different world, that I know of (yeah you got it, somehow I envied her a little bit). My impression was "Is she damn lost? What is she doing in this hackathon?". The idea of a Geek, Girl (relatively pretty) and Insanely rich just don't match well with my logic (BTW she speaks fluent English and Mandarin, plus a bit of French. Studied in SG, US, UK and France. Worked as Journalist, Banker, Artist and App Developer). Aside from her, I had this teammate from Brazil who lived near the Amazon! She is incredibly smart and had strong opinions about stuffs. I wasn't able to know more about her though, aside from the fact she studied and worked in Japan, before being transferred to Singapore. This kind of things you can't find in any hackathon. That is why I can say DMA Hack 2014 is a hell of an experience for me not because of the event, but because of the people that I have met.