Hackathon – For everyone that loves to code and create

Last Friday here in Fruitworks we had our first Hackathon event. When you think of Hackathons you might think of coding, right? That’s certainly where the concept came from. In other words, it’s an event where a mix of developers gets together for an all-day coding fest to create new hacks. Usually, these events are all night affairs fuelled by the excitement of working with peers to develop new and exciting projects.

In Fruitworks we appreciate innovative and creative ideas, so everyone who had one was more than welcome to come along and share it, even if they didn’t have the skills to develop it.

A mish-mash of creative people got together to bounce ideas off one another. This made for a great and productive Friday night. From web developers to journalists, clock and jewellery makers, everyone had fun – whilst also enjoying a free slice of yummy pizza and drinks.

The event that started at 6 o’clock and carried on till midnight was a great success. It was amazing to see how just for a few hours a journalist start learning a coding language and web developer created a piece of jewellery for his girlfriend. Also a lot of other interesting projects were developed and presented till the end of the night.

“The first Hackathon I went to was Dev8D a developer Hackathon for universities, it was a lot of fun, spread over 2 days, and there was lots of drinking, eating, programming and meeting with other developers. However, we tried to do the same thing with Fruitworks’ Hackathon within an evening, given the success I think we’ll be doing more in the future.” Matthew Spence, Lead Developer at Fruitbowl Media

“On Friday night I went to my very first Hackathon in Canterbury, at Fruitworks. I had no previous experience of developing or programming but by the end of the night I had learnt some basic html and had built my very own site! The Hackathon was surprisingly fun, considering I’m not a tech geek J  I also felt very included despite my lack of coding skills as everyone was willing to offer me help. I’m looking forward to the next one.”  Corrine Campbell, blog writer for 10×10 Labs

“To be honest I’ve never been or heard about Hackathon, since last Friday. However, my curiosity took me to the one in Fruitworks. For my surprise I really enjoyed it. I didn’t intend to stay for long but I was fascinated how one simple idea can become alive in the cyber space, so I stayed till the end. Also I had a chance to develop and learn new IT skills.”  Polina Kostadinova, Marketing student