Hack to explore the other side of you

Attending a hackathon is one of my new year’s resolutions, so I joined RHOK (Random Hacks of Kindness) & Govhack this year. Ticking off my new year's resolution is not the only reason why I wanted to be part of a hackathon, I see it as an opportunity to explore your potential.

I am an accountant by trade and I have no in-depth knowledge of coding, programming or IoT. But from time to time, I do have crazy ideas on how to build a robot to automate housework or set up a platform to help people to raise awareness in protecting the environment and combating climate change - these insane ideas often jump into my mind and I always feel that I don't have time to really do something about my ideas nor do I have the skill sets to build something tangible. As such, I saw this year's Govhack is a big learning opportunity for me to execute my ideas.

Here's how I have prepared myself for this learning opportunity:

Day -28 to -14: Brainstorm ideas

I jotted down some ideas that I want to work on and bounced them off friends and others. I always have a notebook and pens with me and after these ideas turned into scribbles, I organised them and put them in Google Drive to share with my friends. I also watched the submissions from last year's winners. I have to say they all seemed to have brilliant ideas and awesome presentations. I was not aiming to bring home a trophy but it is always to get inspired by all these excellent submissions.

But on the other hand, it is kind of sad that within a few days of gathering the problems that I encounter in my day to day life, I ended up with more than 10 problems on my list. This is the reality of living in a big city our society is facing a lot of problems that are waiting to be solved. During my idea gathering time, I came across some disabled people having difficulties getting around using public transport. I saw a vision impaired person almost fall off the platform due to the staff at the train station not being there to pick him up from the train on time. I also talked to a wheelchair passenger on the train and listened to his pain point getting around with trains. From my personal experience, the worst part of catching public transport is seeing my train leave in front of my nose because it took so long to find the platform in a busy interchange train station (e.g. central and Town Hall).

I had highlighted some of the areas that I want to work on: public transportation and helping disabled people. Now I just needed to know what to do about it. My partner is a software developer and he offered a suggestion for implementing my idea: using iBeacons to provide real time location direction (iBeacons can be connected via Bluetooth low energy). This reminded me of when I went to Japan's subway stations: they have clear coloured arrows to direct passengers to their platform (each different colour represents different train line - the visual aid helps passengers their way to the platform much more easier).

With these ideas, I kind of get to know what I want to build and present in Govhack.

Day -14 Get teammates

A couple of my friends have done hackathons before and some of them are quite experienced in the area of IoT. Jack is a project manager, Kif is a data consultant & my other friend who also called Jack is a software engineer. I now pretty much had a well-balanced team ?? Then I set up a Slack channel to create a space for bouncing ideas around. Also, we attended the Govhack info night. Not too much socialising with others as we have got a team and we just need to decide what to do next.

Day -7 Meet people from different industries

I am lucky to have a friend, Hendrik, who works for NSW Transport as an analyst. I got in touch with Henrik two weeks before Govhack (as I had some big ideas on working with public transport data). Hendrik also provided me with some alternative ideas - e.g. how to solve the congestion problem, how to use renewable energy to run public transport, how to tackle environmental issues from public transport. Also, I met with my mentor Andrew Crawford and Michael Sharp - Michael brought up some thoughts on robotics in the manufacturing industry. Interesting topics!

Day -2 Meet the team again and refine the topic

Me and the team met after work, two days before the actual big day for GovHack (29 July). We kept bouncing around ideas and discussed the potential projects that we could work on. We even explored what types of tools/software that we need to use for GovHack project. We also set up our initial action plans on Trello, and watched some winning submissions from last year together.

Day 0 That's the day! GovHack 2017 @ 29 July

Finally! We recruited 3 more people in our team. We now had a data scientist Young and two marketing professionals Thomas and Kevin. On the one hand, having more people is a bonus - as we'll have more helping hands. But on the other hand, it's also a dangerous sign as we'll have a lot of IDEAS as well. I have no problem working in teams and working with other but sometimes I would like to have a deep work session on my own and enjoy the silence.

However, the team was exhausted after a long day at work and with lots of people chatting in the same space, it was hard to focus and we haven't come up some good ideas as in a team by 10pm. We finished the night without achieving anything meaningful. I've told my team my ideas that focused on public transport and accessibility for disabled people. However, they were not too keen on my ideas and they were concerned about whether we could find datasets to support our problem statement and presentation.

Day 1 Of Hacking!

- 5am

I woke up at 5am and started to work on my ideas on public transport and accessibility for disabled people. I listed the problem statement, my solution and addressed the concerns that my team have raised from last night. I messaged everyone on Slack channel at 6am and presented them my ideas in detail: how to collect data, how to execute the plan, and addressed their concerns. I told them if they have their own ideas of the thing they want to work on, I might want to work on my own.

This is not like I don't want to work as a team, but I feel like I know what I want to do. Provided Govhack has deadlines, we have to submit our project by Sunday 5pm (which is the next day).

- 9am

When I reached Fishburners at 9am, I told my teammates my idea. However, everyone in the team had their own idea what they want to work on: Jack wants to work on ATO/ABS field to automate lodging tax returns for individuals and companies; Kevin wants to build a website to help people to understand data/information; Young wants to conduct some research on childcare, etc. Looks like we couldn't reach an agreement what to work on, thus we cast a vote. There were 2 out of 7 votes in my idea, and there was 4 out of 7 votes in another idea. Majority rule has to be followed. I am not sure where I find my confidence from, and then I told the whole team that I wanted to work on my own.

- 10am

By that time, it was 10am, which leaves me 2 hours left to meet the deadline for registering a group. Aww, that's a bit stressful - I've to deal with everything on my own. I had to ask my current team to remove my name and then I had to figure out how to register my own team and fill out all the information that I need. Thanks to all the volunteers and supports from Govhack team, I managed to register my own team by 10.15pm. Then I started to conduct research on what data/information I could use for my project. And I talked to some of the mentors and coaches on site to seek assistance in geolocation and indoor navigation. The coaches from Here (an indoor navigation app company) helped me a lot, they even emailed to their New Zealand colleagues to answer my queries on how to building an app for indoor navigation. Massive thanks to them!

After talking to mentors and coaches, I outlined my prototype and ideas on Prezi (an online presentation tool) so that I have a blueprint of my project and a basic skeleton of presentation.

-1pm

After lunch, I headed home so that I could better focus on my project (as it was a bit noisy at Fishburners and I really needed to focus on working).

On my way home, I shot some videos in Central Station so that I had some material for my presentation. Then I stopped at Town Hall station, looking for ibeacons from Jaycar. Unfortunately, either Jaycar or JBHifi has the ibeacons that I need.

- 2pm

When I got home, I explored Axure (a rapid prototyping tool) and learned how to build a clickable prototype. As I have zero experience how to build an app (especially I am not a coder), having a tool like Axure is a great help for me. Using Axure is a bit like using Adobe Photoshop, you could just drag and drop icons and build the apps that you want. Also, I used Google Draw to draw the maps that I need for showing how ibeacons work in an indoor station.

-5pm

By the end of the first hacking day, I managed to build my app with the help of Axure, and had a demonstration on how my indoor navigation app can cooperate with ibeacons. It was a great learning curve for me to learn to use new software i.e. Axure and Google Draw. I am not a night owl person, so I called it a day when I saw the sun going down from my balcony.

Day 2 of Hacking! Due date for submission

- 9am

I started to learn how to shoot a video as one of the requirements for Govhack submission is to present my project by submitting a 3-minute video. MacBook has a great tool called iMovie. Macbook users can use iMovie to edit and shoot videos. I spent some time to play with iMovie in the morning as I had no experience in shooting and editing a video clip before! And the submission is due at 5 pm today!

-11pm

It took me a bit longer than I expected to learn how to shoot and edit video in iMovie. And I spent quite some time to upload my work to Github for submission. I also wrote my script for the video.

- 1pm

I started to record my video after lunch. Ah, now I know the importance of joining Toastmasters! I’m not very experienced with public speaking and hadn’t shot a video with a voiceover before either! I thought with the help of my prepared script I could have done the video in one take. But it is not the case.

Whenever I read my script to shoot the video (as my video involves some demonstration on how to use the app and my prototype), it didn't come out natural and smooth. And it was a bit dry.

After more than 10 attempts, I decided to ditch the scripts and added some personal stories into my video (and my laughter as well, haha).

I tried to improve my presentation - there was a shoot that was okay, but it lasted for more than 10 mins. I have to cut it down to 3 minutes for meeting the requirement. So I had to pick out the main points that I want to talk about (e.g. how ibeacons and my app would work in an indoor situation).

- 3pm

Phew! After more than 30 shots of the video, I picked one that I thought it would be better than ok. Then I had to rush to the editing process. Luckily iMovie is user-friendly, I could cut and paste different shoots into a video.

- 4pm

I started to upload the video to hackerspace and filled out the requirements/questions before submitting the project. By 4.30pm, I was managed to finish everything.

End of the hack! But it is not the end of my project.

Though I have submitted my project on Govhack, it is not the end of my project. I have recently received ibeacons (ordered them from Pactronics), and I will improve my app and connect the app to ibeacons. And I will test them in the train station). There are a lot of ways that I could improve my project and refine my ideas.

https://2017.hackerspace.govhack.org/project/indoor-way

https://github.com/Sandyxuxinxi

There are some good learnings for me throughout this Govhack project

- Business/Start up learning

In a business environment, you need to find the people that buy into your ideas in your team. You don't want to lose time and energy to exchange ideas with them if you are not on the same page. I know this sounds cruel, but time is everything in a business environment (especially for a start up). Always recruit people that share the same values and buy into your culture.

- New Technology/Software

The reason why I want to use ibeacons for indoor navigation is that I can see the potential that they could be used in busy train stations, airports and shopping centers. There are quite a few places that are using ibeacons for indoor navigation,e.g. London airport, Blue Chilli in Sydney. Real time locating sharing is a trend.

In order to support my idea and build a prototype, I learned to use Axure to build a clickable prototype (perfect for someone does not have much knowledge in coding). Also, I used Prezi for presentation (it is an online version of Powerpoint, but has better infographics and is more interactive). Another thing that I didn't really expect to learn is using iMovie to shoot and edit videos.

- Public speaking & marketing skills

If you have great ideas but you don't know how to sell it, that is a waste of your great ideas! The whole point of having you present your project is a way for you to communicate your ideas and letting others be interested what you are doing. I am an accountant by trade and could benefit from developing some marketing skills.

- Collaboration and networking

Not being able to work in a team is a small mistake from this Govhack. I had been to hackathons before and worked in a team. I like the ideas of working together so that we can come up with a great idea. Being able to accept others' opinions is crucial if you want to do better. However, I did connect with people from different industries (e.g. my friend from NSW transport, my mentor and someone from innovation development) and even sought assistance from mentors and coaches during Govhack. It is all about connecting with others and learning from them.

If you ask me why I want to do Hackathon, I would say to you, you would learn a lot from a short time period (normally in 2 - 3 days), not only do you get to improve your technical skills in programming/UX/UI, connect to people from different industries, but you are also able to bring out the hidden potential within yourself - e.g. being able to learn new tools in a short time span, meet deadlines and be creative and innovative.

The Govhack Awards night is tomorrow. I am not expecting any prizes but I’m looking forward to more hackathons and bring out the other potentials of myself.

Here's the link to my Govhack submission if you want to see it:

https://2017.hackerspace.govhack.org/project/indoor-way