#YeahGoodEnough Hackathon

July 2015

It seems to me that all good tech nerds have participated in a hackathon at one point or another. Yet, hackathons are a fairly new phenomenon, especially this far east of Silicon Valley. When I heard a dear friend of mine, Andrew McPherson, give a talk at ChaDev titled “How to Survive Your First Hackathon” as a precursor to his #YeahGoodEnough hackathon, I was totally on board.A weekend of pizza inside the local Co.Lab hacking at any random problem I wanted sounded like my idea of fun. I guess this is why I have heard Chattanooga called ‘the Sillicon Valley of the Southeast.”

I came with the goal of creating a digital portfolio site to display all my computer engineering projects thus far into my undergrad career. I hardly knew where to start, but being surrounded by tech-savvy people didn’t leave me at a loss. Per advice received, I decide to buy ericaswift.com from Namecheap.com, download Wordpress, and ultimately configure free Google Analytics into the site. I spent those 48 hours compiling media from past projects to write short blogs about each. As you might have guessed, I have updated ericaswift.com since my original hack at the #YeahGoodEnough hackathon, but I saved a copy in the Wayback Machine for nostalgic purposes here.

At the conclusion of the hackathon, everyone was asked to present what they made, working or not. ericaswift.com was alongside many innovative games, apps, and sites created all in the single weekend. The #YeahGoodEnough hackathon taught me to stop putting off my “Invention Ideas” to-do list by blocking out time for myself and hacking away with the attitude that my solution has to be just good enough to work. Also, I learned quickly how beneficial it was to get help from local professionals, and how excited and willing they are to give it.