Hello again!
I know I haven't posted anything lately -- sorry about that. But the last couple of weeks were crazy. Ah, man, I hate December. Every year, it's the same thing: work doubles because of the end-of-year rush, you know. But that's no excuse for breaking my rule of sitting down and writing every week.
I participated in a hackathon for the first time in my life -- an AI Hackathon hosted internally among the company employees. That's all I can share about it, but let me tell you how I joined. I saw ads for the AI hackathon on the screens and, let me tell you, I had no clue what 'hackathon' even meant (lol). I thought it was some kind of course for employees to understand AI. And you know me, anything related to tech and I'm in! So, I said to myself, this is a great opportunity because I just started a course about machine learning and AI. I scanned the barcode and found a team called 'Expo,' with only one guy in it, so I signed up.
Imagine my surprise when they said, "Guess what? It's a competition, and you're in for a three-day marathon competition." I mean, come on! Thursday, Friday, AND Saturday? Man, it's crazy. I wasn't ready. I'm not even a programmer; my couch had other plans for us, but duty calls -- I had to finish whatever I signed up for.
We were the odd ones out, the only team made up of people who didn't know each other. The other teams had chosen their members. When we first met, they asked, "Where's the rest of your team?" We had no idea. Oh, and I didn't mention, my teammate was a full-stack developer named Ramzi - a really cool guy I met there. Then they told us they might move us to other teams because two people weren't enough. When they tried to do that -- guess what? All the other teams rejected me because I'm not a developer. That really hurt (lol).
Then the rest of my original team showed up, and they said, 'Now your team is complete.' One guy was called Ahmed, a Java developer, and the other, Mena, also a Java developer -- but neither knew Python, which we needed for the AI challenge. I took it upon myself to beat all the teams that refused me (lol). Also, I wanted to take this chance to learn the coding developer mindset. I was the project manager, problem solver, prompt engineer, designer, support, idea generator -- everything I could do to support the team.
I won't bore you with the confidential details (top-secret stuff, you know), but let's just say, I learned more about coding in those three days than in a lifetime of watching video courses. We lived at the office -- code, eat, sleep, repeat! -- for all three days. I kept telling my team, "We got this!" but between you and me, I had my doubts.
When I presented to the technical judges, I did horribly. I thought, 'Yeah, we don't have a chance,' but I kept the team motivated. Then, on the final day, after the VPs' and CEO's speeches, when the final five teams out of twelve were announced, I thought they wouldn't ask us to present our business case because we weren't qualified. But then, the speaker came to my team and said, 'Guys, you're next.' Us? Really? Oh my!, thank God I did my homework and prepared a business presentation. And let me tell you, I nailed it. All the books and training about marketing, pitching your idea, talking like TED -- I tested everything I learned live in front of 100 people, teams, VPs, and managers. Alhamdulillah. We won 3rd place out of 12 teams, and we were the team with all the disadvantages: we didn't know each other, I'm not a programmer, and we almost got moved to other teams because not all the team members showed up on time. But against all odds, we still won.
Lesson Learned: "Just do it"
Like the famous slogan says, I jumped into the hackathon without knowing everything and ended up learning so much. Sometimes, you just have to go for it!
Catch you in the next one!
