Day 58 - Google Hackathon
Hacking
Today was the day of the Google Hackathon, an entire day dedicated to us technical founders.
We gathered at Google's office, diving straight into coding. Surrounded by the other CTOs, it struck me how we, as developers, often remain behind the scenes while CEOs are much more visible. Therefore it was a welcome opportunity to talk and collaborate with them. However, with only six hours at our disposal, we also had to focus on writing code if we hoped to present a viable product by the day's end.
My focus was on APIs and getting the image upload feature working. Integrating such functionalities is always a challenge, requiring trial and error and reading through hopefully existing documentation. After several hours, I managed to create a functional demo showcasing this flow:
- Login
- Dashboard overview of Items
- Creating a new Item
- Uploading an image
- Entering a description and title
- Viewing related articles from eBay
- Selecting the most suitable ones
- Returning to the dashboard with the new item created and a price based on the selected eBay items.
Chicken Dinner!
Moments before the demo, disaster struck. I suddenly lost access to eBay; our token was rejected. It seemed all my work would be for naught. Upon investigation, I discovered we had exceeded our daily quota, forcing us to wait a full day before making further requests. Already? I hadn't anticipated running out of requests so quickly. Thinking on my feet, I managed to mock a server response for the demo using the one tab still open. Amidst the chaos, I had no time to prepare a single slide for my presentation. Fortunately, I managed to secure swap in presentation order, giving me a mere 10 minutes to throw together a slide deck, covering our logo, problem statement, solution, tech overview, demo, and team slide.
To my own surprise, I was ready when my turn arrived. Despite the lack of preparation, I think I was able to convey our concept. However, during the demo, I encountered technical difficulties. I struggled to log in due to recent changes in our domain, and the image upload feature failed due to a missing token. Everything seemed to fall apart. Thankfully, Kendal provided a clever distraction handing our flyers, allowing me to troubleshoot. Ultimately, I opted to run the demo locally, which fortunately worked, allowing me to conclude my presentation amidst a sigh of relief.
Following a brief, Google announced the winners. To my disbelief, we emerged victorious! Despite the rough demo, we had secured success. Time to celebrate!
