It has almost been a year since my first Hackathon. I really enjoyed the 2015 Space Apps Challenge ran by NASA and I am looking forward to participating again at the end of April.
The topics for 2016 are out already, although they are yet to release specific challenges, but I am really please to see "mission to mars" in there. With The Martian being so popular a film and book this year I think that category will get a lot of attention.
You can get more details by visiting the site https://2016.spaceappschallenge.org/
Personally that is the category that most attracts me and I have started doing a little reading around to see what current challenges and ideas are relating to it. There are some very broad categories though and there might be a few things that jump out at me when the specific challenges go up.
Key things that I would like to achieve this year are:
Better organisation:
Last year I didn't hear about the Hackathon until the day before , so I was woefully under prepared. This year I will run down a checklist of things applicable to the challenge and polish a few skills beforehand.
Contribute more to the team:
In 2015 I was working with a team of students studying for a masters in robotics, so there was not a lot I could contribute to the core project. It comes back to better organisation, but with more time upfront I can find a team beforehand that I can contribute to. It was a great learning experience though and I found out a bit about ROS (Robot Operating System) while I was there, which incidentally is what the MegaBots robot runs on.
Stay focused:
At the NHS Hackathon Manchester the team had so many good ideas that it was difficult to deliver a single finished presentation. Staying focused on the key components will make a big difference.
Use some new tools:
I have been working with Trello and Slack and would like to try them in the context of a Hackathon as I have heard good things. I have also been looking at several frameworks, bootstrap and Django and would like to try and apply them if possible, but they are web focused, so it depends on the project.
The topics for 2016 are out already, although they are yet to release specific challenges, but I am really please to see "mission to mars" in there. With The Martian being so popular a film and book this year I think that category will get a lot of attention.
You can get more details by visiting the site https://2016.spaceappschallenge.org/
Personally that is the category that most attracts me and I have started doing a little reading around to see what current challenges and ideas are relating to it. There are some very broad categories though and there might be a few things that jump out at me when the specific challenges go up.
Key things that I would like to achieve this year are:
Better organisation:
Last year I didn't hear about the Hackathon until the day before , so I was woefully under prepared. This year I will run down a checklist of things applicable to the challenge and polish a few skills beforehand.
Contribute more to the team:
In 2015 I was working with a team of students studying for a masters in robotics, so there was not a lot I could contribute to the core project. It comes back to better organisation, but with more time upfront I can find a team beforehand that I can contribute to. It was a great learning experience though and I found out a bit about ROS (Robot Operating System) while I was there, which incidentally is what the MegaBots robot runs on.
Stay focused:
At the NHS Hackathon Manchester the team had so many good ideas that it was difficult to deliver a single finished presentation. Staying focused on the key components will make a big difference.
Use some new tools:
I have been working with Trello and Slack and would like to try them in the context of a Hackathon as I have heard good things. I have also been looking at several frameworks, bootstrap and Django and would like to try and apply them if possible, but they are web focused, so it depends on the project.
Comments
Post a Comment