This weekend, I spent my Friday night and Saturday at LadyHacks, the local women*-only hackathon.
Friday
My good buddy Corey scooped me up from work and we headed over for the Friday evening brainstorming. It was a pretty loose format, so Ruth Kalinka (super cool UX-er) and I started an idea storming session (I may have called it an idea vortex, no guarantees). I’m big on the idea that good software is something that solves a good problem, rather than just a feat of technical strength. At least one idea from the idea vortex ended up with a team, and it was a great way for people to meet each other.
Saturday
As a mentor, I was floating and didn’t attach myself to any one team. When I introduced myself, I basically said “I can help with JavaScript and Rails, but if you need to know someone or find a data source, I can probably help you out” and that worked really well. Apparently I know lots of stuff 
Highlights:
- Helped one team find a prototyping tool to use to show how their app would work
- Helped http://www.wearetechwomen.com/ with some hairy Rails problems; there’s still more in there I’d like to help them fix!
- Pointed the Glass team to an API source for 311 data
- Giving a lunchtime talk about how amazing software/hacking is
And besides the projects, I got to spend a good amount of time chatting with people both new friends and old. It was great to see Kimberly Blessing (she’s amazing), and we might have a scheme on building the technical leadership pipeline coming out soon, inspired by some comments attendees shared at the idea vortex. I’m unabashedly ridiculously excited that I met my Norfolk counterpart in JS organizing, Linda Nichols (they have a ninja cat for their logo! WHAT), and we will have some east coast schemes coming this summer.
I expect Technically Philly will do a nice round up of the projects, but for now, be sure to add yourself to WeAreTechWomen if you’re in that demographic, and also go check out Stacey Mosley’s team’s project, RentSafe.
Congrats LadyHackers! Come get your sugar rush for the demos! #LadyHacks2014 pic.twitter.com/geRhuIlHuY
— LadyHacks (@LadyHacksNet) March 8, 2014
P.S. A final note of thanks to Corinne for poking me to write a post
The post LadyHacks 2014 Recap: Great folks, great teams, see you there next year! appeared first on Pam The Webivore.