

How to win a hackathon - ujeezy
http://blog.rumma.ge/post/18897267184/how-to-win-a-hackathon

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mapleoin
I can not understand this at all. Can someone please explain this strange
cultural phenomenon?

I'm serious. What could possibly make someone work on anything for 30 hours
straight (with only one hour break)? I couldn't imagine myself spending 30
hours straight on any activity voluntarily. What about the health
implications?

This reminds me of gamers dying of cardiac arrest after spending days on end
in front of a computer.

~~~
ujeezy
We built a credential in 30 hrs that can give us more recognition for our
startup than we potentially would have gotten for months or more of normal
work. We're not celebrity founders, we don't have press connections, and we
don't know investors. We came in as nobodies on Saturday, and pitched to Dave
McClure, Naval, et al on Monday. Now, we have a great hook we can use to start
any conversation about our company.

As far as health, yeah – kind of sucks to be taken out of commission for a few
days, but a very small sacrifice and completely worth it in our minds.

~~~
nickbarnwell
> We built a credential in 30 hrs that can give us more recognition for our
> startup than we potentially would have gotten for months or more of normal
> work

The importance of this can't be stressed enough. Winning the Facebook
Hackathon within a month of starting university was the catalyst to applying
to and being accepted at a YC company for the summer as well as a ticket
through the interview processes at Google, et al.

More importantly, it also forged connections with local investors and angels
that would have taken years to create had I gone through the normal routes,
and that wasn't even a large event, so I can only imagine what an AngelHack
placing would do

~~~
tikhonj
Hehe, this is really true: I got an internship immediately from one of the
companies sponsoring a hackathon I got second place at. People at other
companies I talked to also liked it.

And, beyond that, it was some of the most fun I've had, for the longest time
in a single go. Even if I didn't place, it would have been great.

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minouye
Also want to add that Firebase should definitely do a write-up about their
Angelhack sponsorship. We were so impressed by the way that they helped and
encouraged everyone there. Andrew, the CEO was giving us advice at 4AM on a
Sunday morning! Seriously, these guys are amazing--basically, anytime anyone
is building anything real-time, I'm going to refer them to Firebase.

~~~
nicholasreed
The Hackathon.io website also used utilized Firebase for all the messaging. We
really can't stress enough how awesome that team is and how useful their tech
is! We didn't do justice to the potential of the system, but the parts we
touched were simply a developer's dream! Looking forward to rebuilding the
messaging with a deeper integration (and timestamps, sorry everybody!) and
some useful goodies

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jgw
I've been wondering about why people do this sort of thing, so thanks for
answering that.

I found it curious that Startupbus, which I believe is going on right now,
seems to never have had much traction on HN, and when it did, it appeared to
be astroturf. It seems like an unforgettable and intense experience, but
combining a hackathon with cabin fever and gross bathrooms just doesn't seem
like a lot of fun.

~~~
kennedysgarage
I was also on the StartupBus last year and it was the best hackathon I have
ever done. I did not take my first nap until 52 hours into it. Had a blast,
met a lot of great people, and gained a lot of press
<http://kennedysgarage.com/projects/lemonade-stand>

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felixchan
Hah, they mentioned the Firebase guys. They're awesome - been using them for a
while now doing 'live' things. Good to hear hackathons are digging firebase.

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molsongolden
Looks great, will you be keeping the site up and running?

edit: When I am signed in and 1.) click "Load Craigslist Listings" then 2.)
click "Cancel" 3.) I get "We're sorry, but something went wrong."

I'm not sure how frequently users will be clicking cancel or if it happens in
every browser but FWIW this is happening in Safari(desktop).

~~~
ujeezy
Whoops, I need to check the logs! Thanks for the heads-up. We do plan to keep
SnapStore.me running. Currently deciding how best to divide our time between
our two projects.

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tathagatadg
HN-ed || ./-ed || reddited - it seems. Hardly loading ... Off topic: Is there
a way of detecting which effect a site is experiencing?

~~~
jaredsohn
>Off topic: Is there a way of detecting which effect a site is experiencing?

I'm not familiar with a way. Some ideas:

* Have Alexa/etc. report real time data including referrers. This requires that work is done by one of the few companies that gets this data.

* Create a site that just monitors which links show up on a manually created list of popular URLs. This would only be an estimate, though since it wouldn't view actual traffic.

* Have people who run sites that might get killed include some code that checks the logs/analytics and reports heavy activity. This is problematic since it requires each site in question to prepare for getting lots of traffic.

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tathagatadg
Is there a hackathon alert service which will notify me of upcoming
hackathons?

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danso
Very, very cool idea. A couple of remarks:

1) How does this get around the Craigslist TOS (if it does at all)? Not being
accusatory -- and I doubt this kind of use would be draining on CL -- just
interested if that was at all an issue to deal with?

2) It's encouraging to hear that you used Rails 3.2's ActiveStore on a
production app. That's a cool feature but I was wondering if it was stable
enough to use.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
re: 2), the implementation is trivial, and rests upon serialize, which has
been in rails (in one form or another) for a while now.

[https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/5daf07704ad21d8856612162...](https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/5daf07704ad21d885661216281ffc48b6ea6adfb/activerecord/lib/active_record/store.rb#L31)

