D17 Dynamo Hackathon

A few weeks ago I was invited to attend a hackathon arranged by Dynamo to show collaboration between IT companies within the North East. Excitedly accepting the invitation I soon began to panic a little as it dawned on me that I'd never attended a hackathon before and had no idea what it would entail. After a quick read on the internet I found that I would be placed into a small team and be expected to produce a minimal viable product within the space of 8 hours and present it to a panel of judges. Soon the panic I had changed into fear... 8 hours is not a long time to create a product.

I arrived at Durham University yesterday after one of the most scenic walks I've had in a long time along the river and was quickly placed into my team. The team was composed of people with various skills across multiple companies; CapGemini, Sage, DWP, HMRC and Accenture. We discussed our ideas a few days before the event and had a solid idea of what we were going to produce. The Idea?

We were to create an application that would assist with IT companies wanting to move their service to the North East. Integrating the application to be used with the Amazon Echo, the user could ask "What Tech resources are available within the North East?". The webpage the user was using would be directed to a list of companies within the North East. The user would also be able to find a list of IT workers in the North East alongside if there were upcoming tech events which they could attend.

We began by creating lambda functions for the Echo to use and a simple EC2 instance to host a webpage and for the results of the echo to output too. Our initial idea was to link into the LinkedInn API to gather resourcing information for the North East however due to time constraints and issues with the LinkedInn API, this idea had to be scrapped. (If the team had more time we believe this could have been achievable however). We also looked into linking the Meetup.com API alongside job websites such as CV-Library, Monster, etc for the users to look for companies who were hiring in the area.

After the 8 hours was up it was safe to say we could have done with more time on the application. 8 Hours is NOT a long time however we achieved a lot within the time. We had managed to create a fully working infrastructure within AWS, have the Echo responding to queries and producing outputs on what was asked of it alongside APIs implemented into the application.

Although this was hard work it was an enjoyable experience I won't forget. All of the teams produced amazing applications within the time given. I learnt some new skills, worked alongside skilled people from other areas of the North East and had a lot of fun doing so.

I'd like to say thank you to Dynamo for hosting the event and thanks to Durham University for having us. I can happily say I will definitely be volunteering for another Hackathon in the future.