A Hackathon Contribution

My Tile Prototype

While I was CTO at Classmates, our parent company got a new CEO, who wanted to challenge everyone and encourage creativity. A hackathon was planned.

In a meeting, he was amazed at a new product he had just purchased called "Tile" that you can attach to something to track its location.

So, instead of selecting something similar to what we did, I chose to respond to the example of innovation our CEO spoke about, a tile prototype. Could I emulate it from scratch?

Seven hours later, this was the crude video I made, which I then shared ahead of the hackathon in the hope it might inspire others. 

Some Geek: I tinker with hardware at home and had spare parts, so I took a Bluetooth-enabled microcontroller prototyping module (rfDuino), wrote some firmware for it, and then wrote an iPhone app to create the demo. Total time: about 7 hours. 

Some famous hackathons

A number of famous products and services have been created during hackathons, such as Facebook's Like Button, which was developed in 2007. This button quickly became a core feature of the social media platform, and is now a universally recognized symbol on the internet. Google's widely used email service, Gmail, was also created during a hackathon in 2001, beginning as an experiment, but eventually blossoming into a widely used product. Similarly, Airbnb's Wish Lists, which helps customers to save and share listings, was created during a hackathon in 2011 and has since become a popular feature among users. Furthermore, Spotify's Discover Weekly, a tailored playlist of music for each user, was developed during a hackathon in 2015 and has been a hit among users, driving engagement on the platform. Lastly, the Microsoft Kinect was also created during a hackathon.

Avoiding pitfalls

  • Inadequate planning is a top issue, with unclear objectives or inadequate resources leading to participants becoming disheartened and lacking motivation.
  • If there is little engagement, with people not being passionate or determined to work on the tasks presented, the quality of the output may suffer.
  • Time restrictions can be a problem too; too short and nobody has time to complete their projects, too long and participants can lose focus and energy.
  • For a hackathon to be successful, communication must be effective, with clear instructions given and an appropriate amount of dialogue between organisers and participants. Will any of the ideas be taken further? How were they evaluated etc?
  • If the executive team intiates the hackathon they need to be clear about follow on steps if any and follow through on them.