Hackaton 2010: Recap

by Kyle David on January 8th at 1:12 pm EST

It’s hard to believe it’s already been a week since we wrapped up our first annual hackathon and we have a lot to show for it.  So I’m going to use this post to provide for a quick summary of the project with the appropriate links to each part.

Our Goal:  Develop an entire project, from concept to completion, in four days.  In the process we were looking to gain some firsthand experience with technologies and methodologies that we may not have done in the past and develop some of our own.

The Idea Stage:  The hardest part of the project, was undoubtedly coming up with the idea. We settled on a website called TwitHA.com, which is a website that compiles Twitter’s funniest posts into a single website and orders and ranks them appropriately.  (Full Post)

Day 1: The first day was largely pandemonium because we had so much to do in so little time.  Dividing resources between: marketing, design, programming, methodologies, etc, required quick decision handling, and a formidable amount of grit to “just do it.” However, we were able to take a whiteboard drawing at 8am and turn it into a skeletal website by early evening.  (Full Post)

Day 2: We have a design and at least a temp logo.  Also we have a very robust administrative panel that is functioning extremely well to manage the site. However, what is becoming a really nice bonus to our efforts is that we are refining a simplistic, yet effective, trending topics methodology.  (Full Post)

Day 3: Every project has a snag.  In this case, it was the Twitter API.  Instead of using the older API, it became quite clear that we were going to have to dive into the real-time API which cost us the better part of a day in development, however the design came together very well as did the admin panel and the necessary ranking methodologies.

Day 4:  The day we worked toward.  By the end of day four (at 5:45pm to be exact) twitha.com was online and functioning as planned.  The trending methodology was perfected and tested exhaustively.  The admin panel sparkled brightly with total control over the website being within a few clicks.  The overall project was a success.

We are going to be posting follow-up as well as lessons learned from the hackathon throughout the Spring, however, help us with the site by tweeting your funny posts with the hashtag #twitha.