Highlights of this article:
I was a mentor at a Hackathon hosted at Uber HQ in February 2020. Out of nowhere, I ended up teaching & doing a workshop about introduction to iOS development to a group of students. The group seemed to love it, especially one person who was asking the right questions, all the time. Most of the people wanted to learn how to make an iOS app in order to deliver for the Hackathon (which is great & totally fine!), but a person, in particular, wanted to understand, really understand things. Most of them have almost never programmed before. I absolutely loved explaining complex things in a simple way, and seeing the happiness on their faces when they clicked on RUN and they had their first iOS app ever! 😍
At the end of the Hackathon I received the following message from the person who, I felt, really wanted to learn iOS development:
“Hi again Arthur! I just wanted to update you that we were able to finish a prototype of our app EcoBud. We also won Director’s Choice Award: Best Environmental Hack. Thank you for helping us get started and teaching us the basics. I’m inspired by you to continue learning iOS app dev :) have a great weekend!”
I almost wanted to cry 😭, from 0 to learning so much and receiving an award in 24 hours, that’s insane!
So I asked her if she wanted me to mentor her outside of the Hackathon, by providing learning resources, etc, and maybe check on her ~ once a month: she accepted.
It’s been approximately 3 months since the Hackathon, you wanna know what she did during that time? I can already tell you this person is super impressive!
• She is now participating in other online Hackathons (COVID…) and won some!
• She is doing iOS development 3 to 4 hours a day & she loves it! She is learning different architectures, ARKit, CreateML 🤯
• And the big news, she is starting her Computer Science degree at Stanford University in a few months… WOW!!
This makes me, even more, want to cry, in ~ 3 months she went from 0 to creating apps and being accepted at Stanford University to pursue a career in Computer Science!
I have the feeling that I had a positive impact on her life by helping a tiny bit and that is an amazing feeling! 😃I’m super impressed by her, she just did not stop, found a passion, kept going, tried, and honestly she did not ask for help either. I just provided the initial help/resources and she did everything by herself! 👏
This article is about describing what a Hackathon is, what is a role of a mentor, and my personal experiences.
If you already know what a hackathon and a mentor are, you can directly click here.
It’s an event, usually lasting between 1 to 2 days (24 to 48 hours, but can be longer) where people meet and create a product from scratch. There is usually a theme for instance it can be Smart Cities or Education. In the word “Hackathon” there is the word “Hack”, which indicates that it’s about hacking together, and not delivering a perfect production-ready solution. It’s expected that the product barely works.
A mentor is a person who can help/guide another person.
A mentor in a Hackathon is someone who usually had done a few Hackathons as a participant in the past. The mentor is usually more experienced than the average experience of the participant group. The job of the mentor varies depending on the stage of the hackathon.
• Beginning of hackathon: He or she will brainstorm with the participants if they want, to make sure that the idea/product is not too crazy so that it can be done in the hackathon time. For example “creating a new computer operating system” might be a stretch if you’re a beginner and you have 24 hours. 😇
• During the hackathon: The mentor will go from group to group and help/unblock if they need. For instance, if a group is stuck on a technical subject, the mentor will read the code and try to unblock, or call another mentor. The mentor can also teach, for instance, if a group wants to do an iOS app but nobody among the participants knows about iOS development, the mentor can organize a workshop and teach the basics.
• End of the hackathon: Participants usually need to prepare a quick presentation to explain what the project was about, the solution, the challenges, etc. The mentor can help and provide some advice for the presentation.
We can dissociate two types of mentors: “mentor” and “buddy”. A buddy is someone who help a new hire to be onboarded, explain how to company works, how to find help, who to talk to, the office, if he or she is new to the city maybe explaining how to open a bank account etc, basically answer all the questions the new hire can have.The job of a buddy is to make sure the new hire integration is as perfect as possible.The duty of a buddy slowly fades out over time, as the new hire integrates more and more into the company. A mentor is someone who will be here to help and guide on a longer term. The mentor is usually more experienced than the mentee, so they meet at least once a week or every two weeks to talk about how the work is doing, careers progressions etc. It can also be more personal discussions if they are comfortable, up to them!