Pennapps Spring 2013

Pennapps is a hackathon that is student run at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) and this wasn't their first, as they held multiple Hackathons previously. What made this 2013 Spring Pennapps so special was that it was their very first Hackathon where many students outside North America attended this event. Making it their first international hackathon.

Hackathon is an event where programmers/developers or even engineers create an application/program of any form that is computer related within the given time limit. This usually equates to contestants sitting in font of their computer for the most part of the event with little to no sleep at all!! Luckily Pennapps provides breakfast, lunch, dinner, midnight snacks, and drinks throughout the competition. But don't bet getting gourmet or healthily foods. To outsiders, hackathons may look like an event that will literally destroy our bodies, but to us "geeks" or "nerds" this is a chance where we can shine and show off our skills, or even possibly learn from to hone our skills for the next hackathon.

Flight to Philly
(Toronto seen in the background)

My experiences with hackathon is pretty minimal. My first hackathon was back in January 2011 where Facebook hosted a 24 hour hackathon held at the University of Waterloo. To tell you the truth, I did not do much coding as I was  grasping the idea of programming. So, I don't really consider this as my first real hackathon and was just there for fun. Back then, I knew that I wouldn't be participating in any form of hackathons in the later future. But around December 2012, my friend has mentioned to me about Pennapps and that I should join his team. Looking at their site at the time (here), it seemed more legit compared to the Facebook hackathon I attended and also our plane tickets were to be reimbursed. So, I said "why not!!" and sent in our team's application. Within the week, we received our response indicating our acceptance to the event, purchased our plane tickets and started to brainstorm some ideas to create during the hackathon.

As the dates came closer and closer, we were able to decide on an idea to create. We named our project Simplyi and it happens to be similar to that of a blog but different in the way how a blogger would blog. The way how Simplyi was to work is the user were to have a Dropbox account and they would place all their stuff (i.e. images, music, text files, and etc.) that they would like to post into a single folder. Then using our Simplyi website, login using your Dropbox credentials and our servers would automatically retrieve your files and create a fully functional website. Users would also have an array of design templates that they can select from for their site/blog. The issue that we tried to resolve here with Simplyi was to allow users, who do not have any technical background to create their own personal site without having to learn web. I will describe more in detail about Simplyi later on in my future blog.

On the taxi getting to UPenn
from the airport.

We decided to take an early flight there to give us some buffer as it was our first time going to Philadelphia. Once we landed in Philadelphia, we took the taxi to UPenn and arrived there with plenty of time to spare and the doors to the building where the opening ceremony was to take place was not open. So, we had to find ways to kill time and since we haven't eaten lunch, we headed to a nearby restaurant to eat. Even after our lunch, we still had time to spare, so we ended up at a nearby Starbucks and discussed our plan. Luckily, the people beside us were also killing to time for event as the building was still was not yet open. The two people beside us were not taking part in the competition but instead they were recruiters from Ebay and Paypal to promote their companies during the event. During that time we exchanged talks introducing ourselves and etc. They also mentioned how frustrated they were because the building was closed and they did not receive any form of notice about what to do and where to go in the meantime. As the start time was closing in, we received their business cards, wished us good luck and parted our ways.

During Opening Ceremony

When we arrived at the building, there were already a long lineup of students trying to get into the auditorium. They weren't letting us into the auditorium because they told us that we all must check-in first and receive our bag full of goodies before entering into the auditorium. After awhile we checked-in and got our bag filled with stuff and sat down in the auditorium. Throughout the opening, there weren't much exciting things going on other than the introduction and every sponsors going through their short presentations about their companies. It might have been boring, but this gave me the chance to learn about all these start-ups that I didn't know about and the services that they offer to their customers. As sponsors continued on with their presentations and as the competition start time came closer, my group started to notice people within the auditorium leaving. As we were also anxious to get underway with our hacks, we also left the auditorium and headed over to the building where the hacking was to take place.

Room that we were occupying.

Once we got to the building, there were already quite a significant number of people settled in and hacking away, while dinner was also being served. As most rooms were filled, we optioned to head to the topmost floor hoping that there would be an empty room. Luckily the first room we checked was empty and marked our spot hoping that we would have the room to ourselves and that we didn't have to share it. As it turns out, even the topmost floor that we were on were quickly getting filled and had no choice but to share the room with others. One of the groups that we were sharing the room with was working on a very unique and bold project. At first they brought in a toilet, which is very unusual and everyone in the room started to question. Even people walking by our room even questioned why there was a toilet in the room. Apparently, this group was working on a program where there was a camera attached to the toilet which detects the urine coming out men's "thing." Once it detects a stream of urine, then it will play music and when the position of the urine stream is detected on one side, it will change track. While if the urine is detected on the other side, then it will tweet on your twitter account that you are currently peeing.

Group in front of us with their
toilet project.

On the second day, our group was already feeling the stress, from the lack of sleep, having to sleep on the dirty floor with a sleeping bag, tons of coding left to do, lack of washrooms for us to properly clean ourselves. Foods that have been provided to us thus far have been sub par, something that you would expect from cheap catering. But anyway, it was something that we had to suck-it-up and move on with completing our project by the next morning. I even noticed that the event holder had an auditorium stashed with drinks that people were allowed to take at their disposal. So, most of time when our floor's drink stash was gone (which they never really did restocked them on our floor) I would occasionally go back and forth getting drinks for our team. Once, in the evening we even went out to a nearby Chinese restaurant to grab a bite. This Chinese food may not be gourmet Chinese food, but after having to eat on whatever they have provided us so far, this Chinese food was gourmet to our mouths!!

As the day was getting closer to midnight, we still had a lot to implement and we were really feeling the pressure as we were also pretty sleepy. The next morning we were able to get the basic core functions working and we did our own little small celebrations. Once completed, we submitted our project and prepared ourselves for the presentation. Presentations were split up into 3 or 4 different groups where each presentations were 2 minutes each. A group of judges in each of the groups would select groups to advance to the final presentation where it will displayed to everyone.

On our flight back to Toronto.

Unfortunately, our group was not selected to present in the final presentation, but as we had time before our flight we stayed and watched the what the finalists have created. In the beginning I thought that our project was the most amazing and practical project ever, but after seeing what these finalists have created, ours were pretty simple compared to theirs and theirs had more practical use for the general public. At this point, I knew these people mean serious business and that I would have to step up my game inorder to stay competitive with them. Once, the winners where selected, it was time for us to head over to the airport. Once, we got there, we checked-in and went through security. As, we still had 2.5 hours left before our flight, we went to a restaurant inside the secured area of the airport to grab dinner as we did not properly have breakfast and lunch. As the time was getting closer to our boarding time, we head over to our gate area and boarded when they allowed us to board. Our flight was smooth and didn't experience any issues, and took this time to get some sleep.

This Pennapps Hackathon has taught me how things that don't seem possible at first is possible and that creativity is important. I mean, looking at the contestants projects, they were the projects that we would have initially thought seemed time consuming and difficult to create. But, good planning and understanding of team member's skills is crucial in becoming successful in these competitions. Pennapps will be hosting another hackathon this September 6-8, but due to personal matters on one of those days I will not be attending. I hope, I will be able to attended another hackathon in the later future. In fact, I have my eyes on hackMIT, which I hope I will attend if they were to reimburse my plane ticket. In the meantime, I will be honing my programming skills!!

Information on upcoming Pennapps.
Information on hackMIT this October.