04. Dez 2015
XITASO @ HackZurich
I’ve heard a lot about hackathons. But never participated in one.So what do you do when you come across an event labeled „the biggest European hackathon“?
Precisely! You sign up, cross your fingers and hope to be accepted.
So did I. And there I am few months later driving to Zurich for my first hackathon experience.
Liutauras Diu, Software Developer
After finishing his studies he worked for Amazon in London and after a while finally arrived in Augsburg and started to support XITASO with his expertise.
In this blog post I will share my thoughts about HackZurich and what I’ve learned.
About HackZurich
People behind HackZurich have an ambitious goal – establish the biggest and baddest tech event in Europe.
And based on 500+ participants in its inaugural year 2014, it seems like they are on the right path.
This year again only 499 lucky tech people and myself got invited to Zurich for a 40 hours attempt to create a next big tech thing!
After arrival, registration, opening ceremony and keynotes from people who achieved a thing or two in tech industry I was looking for a team.
I found the idea of finding people to hack with both terrifying and fascinating. Luckily for me I met one of my team members during a workshop.
We pitched our idea of building an Android app for property search in Zurich during team up event and found another member.
So three of us rolled up our sleeves and started to work. The idea was very simple. Assume you are looking for a flat to rent in Zurich.
Usual process would involve spending hours on various property websites, calling landlord, viewings etc.
But what if there would be an app which would notify your about property you might like while you are walking or driving around Zurich.
Simple! One of the event sponsors provided a REST API which we could use and after hacking through the night and most of the next day we had a decent working prototype.
Overall, for me the experience was eye-opening. I was amazed what people can do in such a short period of time with a little amount of sleep and lots of motivation.
It was also fun and I will definitely find sometime to attend more hackathons in the future.