To start with I said to myself, “I have tried the Half Marathon! Why not try the Hackathon too !! – 22nd July”
I was not sure of taking part in the hackathon as i had never treid RoR, there was still a week to go and not many participants had signed up on their wiki. Even then I just happend to put my name there in the list of participants. There was a faint chance of me going for the hackathon if Shweta (intern at my office) would join in as she has been trying out Ruby on Rails (RoR) for over a month now. I asked her and she was going to leave for Hyderabad a day before the hackathon. I had almost left the idea of joining the hackathon as i had to work a lil harder the same week to meet project deadlines. To cut things short I was surely going to miss the hackathon. Later in the day (I guess Tuesday) something happened (I am not sure wat) but I decided I would give it a try. So, here I was having no clue of RoR but wanting to attend the hackathon a core no-frills geek meet. I took a 15 minute tutorial (LoL) from Shweta on RoR and also got the Agile Web Programming with Rails book (thnks to my office). I would read the book while travelling in the bus and late at night. I could only read it for 3 days.
It was around 11am on 29th July and I typed the first command to start a project in RoR… $ rails mars
If I do not discuss the positives from the event then I won’t do justice to the thought behind organising such an event.
To keep things short
People !
– I met quite a few interesting, friendly and like minded people around.
– Vaibhav Domkundwar from Better Labs who was one of the organisers, was really interested in the proceedings and made everyone feel comfortable. One of the things he stressed on was taking this initiative forward. He also discussed the future potential of the applications with each one personally. He even discussed about his latest initiatives like dealplumber.com and how he wanted the Tech community in India to develop and grow.
– Satish Mishra again from Better Labs made sure that everything was in place. Later after the hackathon he also shared his views on what Better Labs was all about and their india2.0 initiative.
– Pratik who also happened to come down for BarCampMumbai was participating. I had read his blog and even commented on the BarCamp posts. Never happened to to know/speak him (didnt happen to start a conversation with him at the BarCamp). He has been actively involed wtih RoR for around 3 months now. BTW he won the hackathon !
Learning !
– Yup, being there was a learning experience. Though I was not sure of how I would fair at the hackathon but I was sure that I would try to experiment with RoR for 24 hours. Everyone present was helpful and alway ready to share what they knew.
IDeas !
– Everyone was working on their own ideas. The positive vibes around were contagious. Being there was really encouraing.
Future !
– I am sure something like this will catch up soon in other cities too like the BarCamp. Looking forward for more of such geeky encounters.
Deliverables !
– I would surely be realeasing Mars soon to the open source community. This is going to be my second initiative after Qikblogger and I am excited.
Thnks !
Yup, thnks to the organisers and congratulations for a super-successful event.
The MaRaThoN has just begun 😉