I typed away at my first hackathon ever a few weeks ago: PNC’s APIFest. My team and I stayed up all night, eating any kind of computer geek food they threw at us and plugging away. Our idea was very UI-heavy, so I had plenty of work to do. I got maybe 20 total minutes of sleep after I finished. We made it to the final round of judging—one of nine teams did, out of 38 total teams that participated. We didn’t place for any prizes but it was good to make it that far, at least. It was also nice to concentrate on making something without having to deal with externalities a corporate project workflow can bring.
Pittsburgh Business Times covered the hackathon here: Inside PNC’s first hackathon as staffers create apps for customer, internal use. Sometimes I hit a paywall when I try to read the full article (a block that a good hackathon could address).