TechCrunch Disrupt SF Hackathon

Last weekend I went to San Francisco for TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon, my first hackathon here in the US.

It’s an exhausting event. You have to form a team of no more than 5 people and deliver something in less than 24 hours. All the code has to be written on site. No cheating allowed.

Pier 70. Lots of hackers in one place:

I met my teammates, Devin and Jesse, while waiting for the event to start. They are only in 10th grade and Devin had already attended 8 hackathons!

Jesse and Devin (left to right), with nerdy glasses they got from one of the sponsors:

I wanted to create a character drawing app that can let people keep and share their handwriting of Chinese characters. Users can create their characters with fingers or stylus, share them, and “like” other people’s creations. It’s like an Instagram for Chinese characters.

Be sure to bring an extension cord with you. It will come in handy!

The hacker in front of me looked really serious. He ignored all the sponsors and networking and started coding immediately once he found a seat. I decided to follow his approach.

Real hacker at work. Did you see the flame in his eyes?

Dinner served at 7 but the waiting line was super long. I got mine at 8. It was good though:

My teammates in the middle of the night:

One o’clock in the morning:

After coding for 12 hours. I started to feel sick and wonder why I’m here in the first place. I decided at the time that hackathons are really not a thing for me. I saw people putting their chairs on the table and thought that might be a good idea.

Instant standing desk, save your butt and keep you awake:

The sunrise of the next day:

In the end Jesse made an iOS app with Swift 2, Devin made a Restful API with Ruby, and I made an Android app. However, we were too tired to integrate all of our works.

Here are some screenshots of my app.

Write a character:

Various pressure levels:

Browse all your characters:

You can find my code here.

11 AM. After all the hacking, it’s show time!

Big cameras:

Big screens:

It’s my turn!

I felt great wearing that cool microphone and my demo would be awesome, right?

Nope, it was terrible. I quickly ran out of time without writing a single character on stage and Jesse didn’t get the chance to demo his stuff(really sorry about that).

But I kind of love it. It’s really an honor to be among these real hackers who know their trade and actually deliver. And for the first time in my life, I felt so close to being recognized. No one cared about where you come from or which company or school you go to. As long as you can make something, you get one shot, and the possibility is thrilling.

I’ll do better next time.

Last Updated: 2015.9.27