My First Hack-a-thon at LA Hacks!

Entering the UCLA Pauley Pavilion Basketball Stadium was like entering a modern day coliseum. As I walked across the stadium floor, my eyes extended towards the rows and rows of blue seats that rose to the ceiling. Bright fluorescent lights and a jumbotron in the center, displaying the LA Hacks logo, shining down into the pit. Back down at ground level, rows and rows of tables stretched across the stage. Chairs, electrical wires, and other participants settling down. Here I would spend the next 36 hours starting and completing a project, to submit and present to a panel of judges.

Orientation

I arrived alone. My original team did not get accepted and the prospect of working with a group of strangers filled me with much trepidation. I'm surprised I came at all, second guessing my decision up until the morning of when I had to leave. But I knew this was too good of an opportunity to pass up, the opportunity to learn from other computer science students and from the workshops being offered at UCLA. I reached out to the LA Hacks slack channel to look for teammates, messaging multiple people before I was able to team up with a student from Washington state. Two other students came up to me, one from Oregon and the other a student at UCLA, and we were able to assemble a team of four, the maximum amount. I hereby dub them Washington, Oregon, and UCLA student.

Free swag: Tote bag and shirt

That night, on Friday at 9PM, we brainstormed on a project to submit at Sunday 10AM. We were an odd bunch. I had experience working with Unity and Android Studio, but Oregon and Washington had experience with webdesign: Javascript, CSS, and React. Based on the strengths of our two most experienced members, we decided to make a website that allowed users to aggregate the cost of different modes of transportation, specifically public transport vs Uber. It would work similarly to Google Maps and required API calls to Google Maps and Uber in order to display the data. The idea was to create a website that would help local travelers, one of the "tracks" at LA Hacks. I had never worked with React, but I just learned making API requests with Kotlin in Android Studio. I was prepared to Google my way to success. We set up a Github Repo and created some starter files and it became 10pm.

Then, Oregon and UCLA student announced that it was their bed time. I was slightly taken a back, since this wasn't the exactly the event to prioritize sleep. Little did I know that would be the last time I would ever see the UCLA student. Oregon said he was he would be able to sleep in the student dorms with UCLA student. Ironically, I could hear Oregon and UCLA student making plans for what to do after. Washington and I attempted to making some progress but the WIFI was so slow that the music in the background began to stutter. We decided to throw in the towel and sleep as well. LA hacks arranged for us to sleep near the Tennis courts. There the WIFI was much better and I was able to study a bunch of videos that involved Google Maps integration and working with React. I shut off my laptop at 2 AM and rolled into my sleeping bag.

At 6:30 AM, Saturday, we were told we all needed to leave the tennis courts by 7:00 AM, with no warning before hand. Everyone got off their phones and scrambled to use the restroom. think the organizers could have done a better job letting us know before hand--I'm lucky I drove my car so Washington and I were able to store our stuff there. Our day was divided into time slots where we worked on the project or attended a workshop. That morning I was able to meet up with Oregon and Washington. I asked Oregon when UCLA student would be coming and Oregon said that UCLA student would be helping offsite. This was unfortunately not true, as we never saw UCLA student again. I've heard horror stories from my friend, who did a UCI Hackathon, of people who just ditch and never contribute. I didn't think it would happen to me, but it made me question why they entered the competition in the first place. Washington started working on the front end while Oregon helped set up the back end. It was also at this point we realized that utilizing Uber's API concerned calling an associate and potentially establishing a payment plan, so we had to abandon that portion of the plan. Around 1pm, Oregon left for lunch and some instructions on what we could do next, but we also never saw him again, either. Our team of 4 was now only a team of 2, putting a lot of pressure of our team to meet the deadline. I worked with installing React and Node.js on my computer, but with the WIFI issues, this ordeal took half a day to complete.

Laser cutting workshop

Got my very own coaster!

In the mean time, we were able to attend to different workshops. Unfortunately WIFI issues continued to plague the workshops, so we were unable to download any of the starter materials. The presenters also had issues operating with their slides. The workshops I enjoyed the most we ones that did not use the internet. These included:

- A Laser cutting and wood working workshop

- A panel with industry professionals working at Blizzard, Riot, Facebook, and Marvel Studios.

For food, we were served Costco Pizza for dinner, milk and cereal for breakfast, and a four inch sandwich for lunch. I'm not kidding.

Yes this was lunch

The white stadium lights masked the passage of time. I could not tell whether it was day or night while the two of us tapped furiously away on our keyboards. We learned how to work with git, pushing, pulling, and committing.

12 hours and 34 minutes left

Washington made great work of the front end. He added animations with the buttons and having trains appear across the screen. However, we became stuck on integrating a map on the website. We asked some tutors for help, but they were unable to diagnose the situation. After he went to sleep at 10pm, there were only 12 hours left on the clock. I stayed up, determined to figure it out. I sifted through tutorial after tutorial. I don't know how I did it, but in the end I was able to make the API request to Mapbox gl API. Now users would be able to interact with the map and zoom in or out. I was tempted to wake up my partner out of excitement so we can continue, but decided I should just sleep. I committed my changes to the repo and went to sleep at 6AM. This time we slept near the top of the bleachers.

At 9AM, Sunday, we were waken by an announcement, reminding us that we needed submit within the hour. My partner tidied up the look of the maps integration and I typed up a report to prepare our submission. We messaged our two other team members that we needed their last emails but they never responded. We waited until 9:45 AM before submitting.

Washington and I during our demo presentation of "Price Station"

Around 12pm, all the teams we arranged in a science fair fashion. We set up our laptops on a table while judges came by to listen to our presentation. Although we did not finish, I was proud that we were able a product that featured some sort of interactivity and that we were able to present it. At 2pm we were able to see the top 5 projects. I was super impressed with the tools they used and their innovative ideas.

Check out our DevPost submission here.

See our finished product here:

Overall, this Hackathon was a powerful learning experience. Picking up new tools and working with a new team is not easy, but I can count on my own willingness to stick it through.