Had someone told me before I joined Skillogs 6 months ago : “You’ll take part in an event during which you won’t sleep in order to code to create an app”. I would have replied : “ What an idea! I know nothing about coding and I can’t work 24 hours straight! It’s inhumane and impossible.”

Today, thanks to my experience with Skillogs and as a participant of the Women Coding for Success Program I can say with great pride : “ I did it!”

The purpose of such a “hackathon” was to create an application for AT&T who sponsored and welcomed us in their Nice premises.

I will therefore describe my feeling about this event :

For me this hackathon started on Saturday, at 3 am to go to the airport to catch a plane to Nice. Waking up was difficult for me and that’s the moment when I asked myself “Why in the world do I wake up so early, on the weekend, to work for 24 hours? “ That question was answered to after the hackathon and I absolutely do not regret doing it. Once I arrived at AT&T Nice that has a beautiful view on the Promenade des anglais, AT&T exposed a specific issue and expressed their needs to us. Skillogs helped us understand and build a project.

But why launch a project in the form of a hackathon?

After experiencing it, I think that starting a project like that is a way to truly get the participants involved. Strangely enough, the harder the conditions were the more motivated I was to release the product. It is true that 24 hours can be long but at the same time 24 hours to build a project, it’s very short!

Team work went very well, I am surprised by the way we got along. The tasks were distributed naturally and the project took place without any major disagreement. Moving forward as a team is vital et we were all in the same state of mind. I was in such a motivated state that during my 3-hours “sleeping” break I dreamed of codes. It truly was a collaborative work with a lot of communication. We chose to develop the application on only one computer which implies a lot of joint effort and flexibility when it comes to decisions making. In fact, our roles weren’t entirely defined beforehand and there was a lot of versatility within our team.

Consequently, I have learned a lot during those 24 hours and this hackathon allowed me to outdo myself and escape my comfort zone.

It also allowed me to discover what I was truly capable of. It is a great experience and I would do it again without hesitating.