I have got to be honest, I have never heard of [Web Dev Cody](https://www.youtube.com/@WebDevCody) before but when I saw that he had a [hackathon](https://hackathon.webdevcody.com/) in partnership with [Convex](https://www.convex.dev/) I knew I was going to have to carve off a bit of time from [BattleTabs](https://battletabs.com/) development to have a crack.



# Competition Categories & Ideation

[![](./categories.png)](./categories.png)

The competition was themed around Collaboration and AI so I racked my brain for a bit before coming up with an idea.

I wont spend too many words explaining what I built, instead ill let the video that I used to demo the project do the talking:

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XZ2iCEcW_io" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

# Results

Out of [53 submissions](https://hackathon.webdevcody.com/submissions), I came third in the AI category which im pretty happy with considering I spent less than a day on it.

Watch Cody talk about my project here:

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PJjk4Qg_GiU?si=9oUEhACACbj3KxkR&amp;start=186" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

# Conclusion

I had a ball working on this, its pretty astounding that you are able to build this much functionality in such as short time. I was able to implement and iterate as fast as I could go without any boiler-plate bogging me down.

[Convex](https://www.convex.dev/) really is an incredible technology, if you are looking to do a web app you should definitely check it out!

If you are interested in playing with Chatter Craft yourself the demo is here: https://chatter-craft.netlify.app/

If you want to peek under the covers a bit the source is available here: https://github.com/mikecann/chatter-craft

Just a quick post on my recent attendance of the one-day hackathon "Energy Hack".



# Energy Hack

Its been a while since I have done a hackathon so when I saw Energy Hack from the Ministry of Data popup in my inbox I thought solving energy problems would be interesting so I signed up.

Unlike other events I have participated in this was a one-day event so time was really limited. Starting at 8am you had just a few short hours to form a team, come up with an idea to solve one of the three challenges then present your idea at 5pm.

There was \$4k worth of prizes on offer to help motivate people to attend which is pretty generous for a one-day event.

[![](./welcome.jpg)](./welcome.jpg)

# The Day

I teamed up with two other guys that I met right at the start of the event. Jeremy is a semi-retired engineer, programmer and general all-round technical knowledge-base. Tim is a computer science graduate, ex-management consultant and energy-industry expert.

[![](./tim_jer.jpg)](./tim_jer.jpg)

With that combination of expert knowledge and experience I felt like we had a good chance.

So after officially forming our team and coming up with a name (Power Rangers), we set to work coming up with a solution to the three challenge questions.

The theme of Energy Hack was energy in small business so all three challenges revolved around that:

[![](./challenges.png)](./challenges.png)

I hadnt looked at the challenges before I arrived but Jeremy had and had even come up with an idea to solve Challenge 3 that he was keen to pursue.

The idea was to apply data segmentation techniques to small business categories so that the government or industry could more accurately target their solutions.

We discussed it for a little while and decided to give it a shot. I was a little hesitant because I wasnt sure that it was really "innovative" enough for a hackathon but after some more thought I realised that solving the "targeting" problem was really important as having a great solution for reducing energy consumption was well and good but if you dont know who you should target with your solution then you are just shooting into the dark.

Using my past hackathon experience I decided early on that it was probably best that we didnt even attempt to actually build a solution. A few short hours isnt enough to do anything meaningful and you were more likely to just end up stressed and rushed.

Instead we spent the bulk of the time trying to come up with the most clear way of conveying our idea and why we felt it was important.

[![](./preso.jpg)](./preso.jpg)

The result was a well rehersed slide deck that I was pretty happy with. If you are interested then you can find the slides here: [https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1sLRtkFDUtK7kfE4MyXLUb2mVWYi47mWn1qUgw_7E_s4/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1sLRtkFDUtK7kfE4MyXLUb2mVWYi47mWn1qUgw_7E_s4/edit?usp=sharing).

So 5pm rolled around and it was time for all 8 teams to present.

I decided not to present this time. Tim is a far better orator than me and he did a great job giving the 3 minute presentation. Jeremy and I went up to join him for the two minutes of questions.

[![](./watching-pres.jpg)](./watching-pres.jpg)

# Results

So sadly we didnt win a prize. I just think we didnt do anything innovative enough. Basically we were pitching a consultancy who's product is a report. So even though I think we did a great job with putting together the slides and presenting ultimately it wasnt what the judges were looking for.

# Conclusion

I had a great time again and met some really interesting people that I hope to keep in contact with. Thats one of the main reasons for going to events like this, build your network up because as they say "Its not what you know but who you know".

Its been a while since I have done a hackathon. I spent [half of the year](/posts/and-off-we-go/) camping my way around Australia so I guess thats to be expected. So when I saw that startup weekend was running again at the weekend I thought sure, why not.



# TLDR;

I had an idea, pitched it, gathered a team and validated an idea over the course of a weekend. I overcame some personal hurdles and came out the end with a potentially exciting business idea.

# What is Startup Weekend?

During Startup Weekend the objective is to go from idea to business over the course of just a couple of days. You form a team with total strangers and work together to validate your business and if possible build a prototype of your product.

The last time I did Startup Weekend was [back in 2015](/posts/startup-weekend-perth-2015-tuckr/) when I worked on a business called Tuckr that aimed to help people locate where those awesome food trucks are near you.

I remember ending the weekend that time happy but thinking that I probably wouldnt go again as it didn't really involve much technical work. It was more of an exercise in product validation than actually technical work and as I consider myself a highly technical person I didn't feel that useful.

# So why sign up again?

Often the only way to grow as a person is to get out of your comfort zone and do things that you arent good at or scare you.

I have always been scared of is standing up infront of people and presenting. Im much more comfortable sat infront of a computer in my own little word working on my own little problems.

So this time I decided I wanted to pitch an idea, form a team if people were interested and take it all the way through to the end and stand up infront of the judges and give a final pitch.

# The warm up

So friday rolls around, I rock up about 6pm, theres quite a few people there already. I have done this a few times before, I know what the deal is. I mingle around, grab a beer, chat to a few people.

Before I know it, its 7:30 and time for pitches. Theres about 90 people there and about 20 of those line up to take their turn to pitch their idea to those remaining in their chairs.

Im near the back of the queue because I want to see what other people are pitching just incase I want to chicken out and join one of them instead.

Theres some really interesting pitches from all kinds of different industries but none of them has grabbed my attention enough to stop me pitching, I guess the beer must have helped with the courage.

# The pitch

So I take the stage, I have 1 minute to explain my idea, I have practiced it a couple of times so I know that I should be able to do it in the time.

> Hi im Mike Cann, im a professional games developer but im also a blogger that has kept a blog going for over 10 years now.
>
> One of the constant problems with blogging is how do I get more people to read my posts?
>
> One solution to the problem can be seen on websites like Medium.com. At the bottom of each post is a "Reccomended for you" section that lists blog posts from other Medium.com authors.
>
> This circulates traffic between the authors on Medium.com and thus is good for everyone.
>
> But what if your blog isnt on Medium.com? Like mikecann.blog for example?
>
> I dont want to have to move all my posts over to Medium to take advantage of that post syndication feature.
>
> Fortunately there are alternatives. If you google this problem you will encounter Outbrain and Taboola.
>
> These multi-billion-dollar companies however are not targeted towards casual bloggers like me. You probably have seen them, they can be found at the bottom of websites like cnn.com and thewest.com.au. The recommended articles often have click-baity titles like "Details From The Set Of 'Bewitched' That'll Stun Fans" or "Mums, these workout hacks are just for you".
>
> This is not something I want next to my content.
>
> I want to build a click-sharing service for bloggers that shows relevant recommendations for my content without the clickbait.
>
> To validate this idea I need a designer and people with blogging or advertising experience.
>
> Thankyou.

[![](./whatIwant.png)](./whatIwant.png)

# Team formation

With the pitch over I couldnt relax just yet. Now I had write a poster to attract others to join my team.

[![](./theposter.jpg)](./theposter.jpg)

I tried to convey the basic business model in as simple a way as possible.

Well it seemed to work as I managed to gain 3 other members of the team. Ro, a fellow blogger and business woman, Alexis a writer with a bunch of blogger contacts and Andrew a designer.

So we had one developer (me), one designer to make pretty pictures and two business people with domain experience. IMO this is the perfect team!

[![](./ro.jpg)](./ro.jpg)
[![](./andrew.jpg)](./andrew.jpg)
[![](./alexis.jpg)](./alexis.jpg)

# Planning

The remainder of the evening was dedicated to introducing ourselfs and working out how we were going to work together, what our roles were and how we were going to communicate.

One thing that surprised me during this phase was that I had to re-pitch the idea to my team again before they fully understood what it was I wanted to build. Perhaps the idea was too complex? Perhaps I didnt explain it well enough first time? Either way I must have left some sort of impression as they joined me regardless.

# Trello

I like to use Trello for organizing a project during hackathons. Well I actually like using Trello for organizing just about any project but I particularly like it for hackathons because its really easy to get started, everyone can collaborate images, files, videos, whatever at the same time and most importantly its free!

[![](./trelloscreeny.png)](./trelloscreeny.png)

# Saturday

The following day was all about validation. I had a few things I wanted to cover.

1. Has this been done before?
2. How do Outbrain and Taboola work, what are their positives and negatives?
3. Do bloggers even want this?
4. What are we going to call our business?

Note, none of those points actually involve any development work. From previous experience I knew how time constrained we were going to be over the weekend so I decided early on all we were going to do is validate the idea, not actually try to build anything.

With me acting as leader / coordinator my time was going to be very limited for development work.

So I spent the day giving Andrew our designer direction as he began the work of building the website we would send people to try to get feedback and thus judge whether it was something that bloggers wanted or not.

I also assisted Ro and Alexis with tasks that addressed the other points. One interesting thing that came out of Ro's research into Outbrain was the fact that you needed a credit card just to sign up and get started. This is definately something I want to avoid with our business.

# Naming

We spent a little bit of time on the Saturday morning coming up for a name with ourself. We had a little bit of back and forth, we wanted something that gave a hint that we were a blog syndication service but without too many syllable.

In the end settled on "Syndi.me", its not perfect as it could be spelt in a few different ways but it conveys the information we want without being too long, and critically the domain was available!

# Syndi.me website

[![](./syndiwebsitescreeny.png)](./syndiwebsitescreeny.png)

By the end of Saturday evening we had finished the website: https://syndi.me and posted it to a number of blogger facebook groups and sub-reddits so hopefully over the course of the next day or so we will get a little bit of feedback to see if people are interested.

We used Squarespace to build the site as its quick and relatively low cost. Andrew was very familiar with Squarespace too so that cut down the learning time.

I found it tricky to work out what copy to put on the website. How to convey the idea without being too complicated right away. Fortunately Alexis was there to help me. In the end what we went for was a simple summary, followed by more in-depth information in an FAQ page.

# Sunday

By the time sunday rolled around it was all about preparation for the pitch. Building slides and practice practice practice.

We had a number of helpful presentations from the organisers during the weekend which really honed our pitch by encouraging us to present the idea as a story.

After the 10th time practising the pitch I was feeling pretty confident that I could do it. I knew things were going to be different when I actually get up there though.

# The final pitch

So by late afternoon it was the big moment. We all took our seats as the pitches began.

I was up 5th of 11 so I had a few to watch first which was both a blessing and a curse as there were some really great pitches. Infact as a whole the pitches were much, much better than any other Startup Weekend I had been to.

So finally it was my turn. I took the microphone and got up and stood infront of the projector and 100 other people and began my rehearsed pitch..

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jPYgKR1hGlg" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Oh dear! Not good, I almost choked on the second slide. I dont know what happened exactly I think I was concentrating on the slide before which pushed out of my head what I was going to say next, then I started to panic and that then spiralled down into more panic.

I stopped, took a breath and decided to just move on and try not to think about it.

The rest of the pitch went well so fortunately it want a total disaster.

# Judging

Once I had finished my 4 minute pitch the whole team came up on stage while the judges asked us some questions and gave us feedback.

One of the first points mentioned by one of the judges, Charlie Gunningham, was that my back was to them the whole time, whoops!

The rest of the feedback was very positive, they all thought the idea was great and couldnt believe that it hasnt been done before and we should continue it on!

# The presentations

With that nerve racking experience out of the way we took our seats once more and watched the other pitches.

Once they were all over, the judges went into the back room and conferred for a few minutes before coming out and declaring the winner.

As I mentioned above I was really very impressed by the pitches this time. There was some really great ideas and some very well presented information. Some of the groups really did an excellent job portraying their information.

I wasnt expecting to win anything considering the mess I had almost made of the pitch but to my great surprise when Chloie stood up and announced that the runner up prize went to Syndi.me I was totally taken aback. Wow we had come second! (well technically third as there was a join first prize this year)

[![](./tshirt.jpg)](./tshirt.jpg)

We went up on stage to applause, was given a back of goodies, shook hands with the judges then took our seats with massive smiles on our faces.

# Conclusion

I am so glad at how the weekend turned out. I achieved what I aimed for. Pitch and idea, form a team and try to validate an idea.

I was super lucky with the team that joined me over the weekend, they were just the right mix of people with no egos. We worked together so well, and they were incredibly supportive of me even though I freely admitted I wasnt the best presenter but wanted to give it a go regardless.

So now I have to decide if I want to take the judges advice and continue our work on Syndi.me.

What do you think dear reader? Leave a comment below if you think I should continue on with Syndi.me and actually build a working solution..

Wow, I cant believe its been one whole year since [the last Govhack](https://www.mikecann.blog/portfolio/projects/govhack-2015-should-i-drive/), the hackathon where groups of people use government data to hack together a project over the course of a weekend.



I had a great time last year on the "[Should I Drive?](https://www.mikecann.blog/portfolio/projects/govhack-2015-should-i-drive)" team. We used WA Main Roads and other data sources to try to answer the question "should I drive to my destination or take some other form of transport?".

This year I set myself a goal. I wanted to do something to do with Machine Learning / AI. Its a field of computing thats really hot right now and im really interested in getting involved and learning more.

So as with [last year](https://www.mikecann.blog/portfolio/projects/govhack-2015-should-i-drive), after a brief welcome presentation by the organizers, competitors were invited to take the microphone and pitch ideas. Off-stage the pitchers then threw together a quick poster with their main ideas.

[![2016-07-29 18.52.00](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/2016-07-29-18.52.00-1024x768.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/2016-07-29-18.52.00.jpg)

There were a coupple of interesting ones but the one that really caught my attention was from a guy who wanted to apply Machine Learning to old historic photographs. After a brief discussion with him around his poster I immediately signed up. 20 minutes later we had a team and were heading off upstairs to find a quiet area of the (awesome) [Flux co-working space](https://www.fluxperth.com/) where Govhack was being held this year.

In total we had 8 members, 3 technical and 5 non-technical. That first evening was mostly spent planning who was going to do what and what the priorities were. The three of us technical people sketched out our plan and divvied up the work so that we were all working efficiently.

[![3tech](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/3tech-1024x683.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/3tech.jpg)

I took the front-end website and backend node host / API while Dominic took the Python code which would interface with the various data sets and Houraan did the code which would apply the Machine Learning to the images returned from the data sets.

[![theplan](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/theplan-1024x683.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/theplan.jpg)

With the plan sorted I knew I had a bunch of work to get done before the non-technical people could get their hands on something to use and experiment with. With that in mind I decided to get up really early (4am) on Saturday morning and start work on the site. Im glad I did as it took me most of the morning to get the shell of an app up and running using ReactJS with Typescript and a NodeJS backend hosted on Heroku (such is the way with modern Javascript).

[![chrome_2016-08-01_12-54-14](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/chrome_2016-08-01_12-54-14-1024x830.png)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/chrome_2016-08-01_12-54-14.png)

When I arrived at Flux later that morning, I demoed my progress and we discussed the scope of the project. The original idea was to produce videos from several photos in a sort of slideshow but after some discussion we decided to narrow the scope so that we were more likely to finish it in time. We decided that if we could just take old photos and apply ML to "Colourise" them then would be a cool way to explore the past using a modern technique.

With the scope of the project resolved, our next task was to come up with a name for it. One of our non-technicals Karl came up with "Colourful Past", we all agreed that it fit the scope and described the project perfectly.

The rest of the day was spent furiously hacking away on various facets of the project.

We setup a [Trello Board](https://trello.com/b/en3HeDLx/colourful-past) to manage tasks and a place to store links and other information about the project.

[![chrome_2016-08-01_13-04-34](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/chrome_2016-08-01_13-04-34-1024x804.png)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/chrome_2016-08-01_13-04-34.png)

We used [Slack](https://slack.com/) for general communications and link sharing when we couldnt just shout across the table.

[![slack_2016-08-01_13-48-55](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/slack_2016-08-01_13-48-55-1024x718.png)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/slack_2016-08-01_13-48-55.png)

Source code was uploaded to our github org [https://github.com/colourful-past](https://github.com/colourful-past):

[![chrome_2016-08-01_15-40-43](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/chrome_2016-08-01_15-40-43.png)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/chrome_2016-08-01_15-40-43.png)

In general things went really smoothly. The technical side worked really well, we were able to work efficiently independently then combine the results towards the end. On the non-technical side there few a few issues managing tasks, keeping everyone working all the time but in general we were able to work effectively together.

By the end of the first day we had a basic but working product. You could type in a search term such as "Anzac Day", the client would then send an API request to the NodeJS server which would then in parallel call a number of Python scripts to query various datasets, the results were then aggregated and returned to the client.

[![chrome_2016-08-01_14-28-58](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/chrome_2016-08-01_14-28-58.png)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/chrome_2016-08-01_14-28-58.png)

The user could then click a button to "Colourise" the black and white image. This makes another call to NodeJS which calls another Python script which uses a Machine Learning model developed by UC Berkeley and trained on 1.3 million black and white images to generate a coloured version of our historic photograph. The resulting image is stored in S3 and the URL returned to the client.

[![chrome_2016-08-01_14-35-48](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/chrome_2016-08-01_14-35-48.png)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/chrome_2016-08-01_14-35-48.png)
(above image is just a placeholder and was not generated by the AI)

After I left on the Saturday evening, to get some needed sleep, Houraan soldiered on and gave the site some much needed design love. When I woke in the morning the site looked much improved, Houraan had done a phenomenal job.

[![chrome_2016-08-01_14-41-27](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/chrome_2016-08-01_14-41-27.png)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/chrome_2016-08-01_14-41-27.png)

[![chrome_2016-08-01_14-42-59](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/chrome_2016-08-01_14-42-59.png)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/chrome_2016-08-01_14-42-59.png)

Sunday was our final day and we spent the first half adding the last bit of polish to the site, such as a really cool subtle gradient effect on the text:

[![2016-08-01_14-48-13](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/2016-08-01_14-48-13.gif)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/2016-08-01_14-48-13.gif)

Then we concentrated on the presentation and video which the judges will be using later that day. Molly did a great job putting together our video which was uploaded to Youtube at the very last minute:

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kuNnUWMXwXs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The presentation worked a little different from last year. Instead of everyone getting up on a stage and doing a slideshow in front of the judges, the judges came round to each team's desk where we did a demo and a short talk before being asked a number of questions. Houraan, Karoline and Bruce nailed it for us while the rest of us watched and gave moral support.

[![2016-07-31 15.33.01](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/2016-07-31-15.33.01-1024x862.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/2016-07-31-15.33.01.jpg)
(We had a little spare time so we thought we would play on the "Colourful" aspect of our product a little by blowing up some balloons, producing a poster and dressing in bright colours)

All in all it went really well and im very happy with the result. The judges seemed to think so too as we came away with a 1st prize in the "West Australian Community Prize" category.

[![2016-07-31 19.33.43](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/2016-07-31-19.33.43-1024x768.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/2016-07-31-19.33.43.jpg)

Well thats just about it. If you want to have a look at what we produced you can try it out at [https://colourfulpast.org/](https://colourfulpast.org/). We dont know how long we are going to be able to keep the expensive AWS GPU instances going for so if you are viewing this post some time from now it might not work for you.

I just want to say a massive thanks to all my team-mates for making it an awesome weekend of fun hacking, thanks guys, I hope you see you all next year!

[![IMG_0389](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/IMG_0389-300x200.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/IMG_0389.jpg)[![IMG_0455](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/IMG_0455-300x200.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/IMG_0455.jpg)[![IMG_0436](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/IMG_0436-300x200.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/IMG_0436.jpg)[![IMG_0395](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/IMG_0395-300x200.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/IMG_0395.jpg)

(P.S. Big thanks to Karl for taking all the pictures!)

So this weekend I took part in an event I signed up for some time ago: Startup Weekend, Perth. Startup Weekend is an event where teams all over the world come together to build a startup over the course of a weekend.



[![2015-11-16_08-28-59](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015-11-16_08-28-59-1024x615.png)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015-11-16_08-28-59.png)

Being very interested in startups as I am and having enjoyed [GovHack earlier this year](https://www.mikecann.blog/portfolio/projects/govhack-2015-should-i-drive/) I thought it would be a perfect event for me.

It started on Friday after work. We piled into the startup-hub Spacecubed on St Georges Terrace. After a few looseners and semi-nervous chitchat we were soon taking our seats for the introduction presentation by the excellent [Marcus Holmes](https://www.startupnews.com.au/about/).

[![2015-11-13 19.49.25](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015-11-13-19.49.25-1024x768.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015-11-13-19.49.25.jpg)

After the short talk split into informal groups to play "Startups against humanity" (I think). Each group was given a "Problem" and a number of "Solution" cards. In typical [Cards Against Humanity](https://cardsagainsthumanity.com/) style, the problems and solutions were suitably 'humerous' in nature.

As I understood it, the purpose of this game was to get the creative juices flowing. For me tho it just seemed to devolve into a shouting competition with the loudest people making the decisions. Being small and on the outside of our group I couldn't really see what was going on or contribute. Instead I just decided to take a bathroom break and wait for it to finish.

Thankfully the game was only played for a brief time before the real action started, pitching time. The pitches were held in the same fashion as Govhack. Pitchers would line up and take turn for one minute each to pitch their idea to the group.

This whole process went rather smoothly, all credit to Marcus and his team there for keeping the pitches moving rapidly. Infact the entire event was run very well, it felt much better organised than Govhack, but then again it was the 7th time it had been run.

[![2015-11-13 19.49.27](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015-11-13-19.49.271-1024x765.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015-11-13-19.49.271.jpg)

After presenting their concept the pitchers knocked together quick posters and affixed them to the walls. We, the non-pitchers then went around the various posters and deliberated over which one we wanted to join.

At Govhack we were given little stickers to stick on each poster to show our interest. I didn't see the point in that at Govhack so thankfully that process wasn't followed through at Startup Weekend.

The [mistake I made at Govhack](https://www.mikecann.blog/portfolio/projects/govhack-2015-should-i-drive/) was to deliberate for too long. I couldn't make my mind up at that event and very quickly the teams had formed and I was left at the end wondering around like a lost lamb wondering where to go.

I was determined not to make that mistake again so after one quick lap of the available options I decided upon Mary's "Stop the hangry". I chose it because the idea was simple: "Develop an app that maps food trucks in Perth".

The idea resonated with me as I could quite easily see a situation: it's late, you want to eat, all the good restaurants are booked and you don't want take away or Maccas yet again, what you really crave is some wood-smoked-ribs or perhaps spicy mexican tacos but you have no clue where that food-truck you saw that one time would be.

When Mary pitched the idea I was stood at the back of the room and noticed quite a few people nodding their heads around the room. For me this was also a good sign that the idea was good, it was an instant crowd validation.

So I signed up to "Stop the hangry" which eventually turned into "Tuckr". The irony is that Mary already knew of me via my blog post of Govhack, she had even downloaded Mr Nibbles for her children to play, we were going to get on just fine :)

Surprisingly (to me at least) we struggled at first to get the required 5 team members. I thought the idea was solid but it seemed like others weren't so sure. It also looked like I needn't have rushed into my team choice as the group forming stage took much longer than the Govhack event.

I had quite a few offers by other teams to join them. It seemed like developers were very much in demand at the event and hot property. I was sold on the food truck idea however and instead tried to convince them to join us instead.

Just as the situation was starting to look dire, Mary and I we finally secured our third Member Adam then soon after Trent, Daniel and finally the golden catch, Sydel the designer, an even rarer breed than developers at Startup Weekend.

[![2015-11-14 12.53.23](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015-11-14-12.53.23-1024x768.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015-11-14-12.53.23.jpg)

So we had 6, two developers, one designer and 3 non-tecchies, an ideal composition, things were looking good so we set to work.

It had been heavily suggested to us, then over the course of the weekend hammered into us, that if you wanted to win it wasn't about building the thing, it was about validating that people wanted your thing.

Now this is the critical rub for the entire event for me. The more and more I go to events like this and other startup related meetups I find out about the type of person I am and what drives me. I am discovering that I driven by the technology of the product rather than the process of business creation itself. I love to make the thing not necessarily make the business that makes the thing.

I totally understand that the business is completely necessary. You must have a vehicle to drive your product and more importantly you need to make sure you are creating the correct product in the first place. This process is what Startup Weekend is all about and unfortunately for me, not about actually creating the thing.

In hindsight this is kind of obvious, the event is called Startup Weekend, its about building a startup in a weekend. It's not a hackathon like Govhack which is all about hacking together various technologies to solve a well defined existing problem.

So although I really wanted to make the actual app, we decided it would have been better if we just concentrated on making a landing page and designing how the app would look and function. These things are what the judges are actually looking for, not an actual working product.

[![2015-11-14 16.47.21](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015-11-14-16.47.21-1024x768.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015-11-14-16.47.21.jpg)

So until 8pm on Friday, 10pm on Saturday and 4pm on Sunday I hacked together a landing page: [https://tuckr.co](https://tuckr.co) with Adam whilst Sydel produced some awesome mockups for the app. Daniel, Mary and Trent spent the time trying to validate the idea and develop the business model.

During the entire weekend we had regular "check-ins" where all the teams would come together in the main Spacecubed area and let others know what they had been working on and what difficulties there were having. It quickly became obvious that many of the teams were far ahead of the curve. By Saturday morning some of them already had a landing page or product and some had even already generated revenue.

I found check-ins both inspiring and depressing. The were inspiring because could see that other groups were suffering some of the same problems to you but it was also sometimes disheartening to hear how far ahead some of the teams were.

[![2015-11-15 11.36.01](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015-11-15-11.36.01-1024x768.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015-11-15-11.36.01.jpg)

Soon enough Sunday afternoon rolled around and it was time to present our startup to the the rest of the teams and hopefully win over the four judges.

The presentation process was much better organised than Govhack. Instead of each team going up and individually connecting and disconnecting their laptop from the projector (which took ages and untold number of problems) every team was required to submit their slides 1 hour before we were due to present. That way a single laptop was used to run the slides. It also meant that there was no way you could have demoed a product even if you wanted to.

Our presentation went well, Mary did a great job of presenting our business concept to the room while I cowered backstage clicking next on the slides.

Sadly tho we didnt win this year, there was some truly excellent competition in the form of [Veri Vote](https://veri.vote/), [Codename Canary](https://codenamecanary.github.io/) and [YoPro](https://twitter.com/yoproapp). Hats off to those guys, they did an excellent job and Veri Vote and Canary had especially great solutions.

Special mention should go to [Mulch Club](https://www.mulchclub.co/) too who were a twice disqualified team (no fault of their own) who managed to generate close to \$1000 over the course of the weeknd which is just phenominal.

So after the awards ceremony the event was wrapped up at 8pm. I enjoyed my Startup Weekend, I learnt a whole bunch about business and startup creation and about myself. Would I do it again? Im not sure, I learnt a lot but I think I had more fun at Govhack where we hacking tech together to solve existing problems.

Massive thanks to my awesome team, you guys did a great job and I hope we can stay in touch and perhaps team up again next time!

[![2015-11-15 19.53.33-2](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015-11-15-19.53.33-2-1024x768.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/2015-11-15-19.53.33-2.jpg)

Well I took a short break this weekend from Mr Nibbles Forever development to head down the street to [SpaceCubed](https://spacecubed.com/) and compete in the [2015 GovHack competition](https://www.govhack.org/perth2015/).



I had heard of GovHack from one of the [Morning Startup](https://www.meetup.com/Morning-Startup-Perth/) meetings I like to attend every Wednesday here in Perth.

The West Australian government has been running this competition for several years now to try to promote their new open data policy. The idea is simple, get a bunch of nerds together, give them the data and offer some prizes and see what happens.

[![CI-222zUcAAvd7s.jpg-large](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CI-222zUcAAvd7s.jpg-large-768x1024.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CI-222zUcAAvd7s.jpg-large.jpg)

Well I turned up on Friday evening not knowing anyone and having no clue what to expect. So I grabbed a beer and started chatting.

Some people were in teams already, some people worked together for a day job but it seemed like there were quite a few other people in the same boat as me, new to it, without a team or project or idea. That made me feel a little better, but I still had no clue what to expect.

[![CI_vYWaUEAA1-_P.jpg-large](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CI_vYWaUEAA1-_P.jpg-large-1024x768.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CI_vYWaUEAA1-_P.jpg-large.jpg)

After a few short speeches the participants were invited to stand up and pitch their idea. All in all there were about 20 pitches. Some sounded interesting, some sounded really wacky such as one team wanted to use the data to become evil-masterminds. One team even suggested that they were going to correlate the prizes against the data and see which prizes were the best to go for then work out and idea from there.

[![CI_Fh1FUAAAv7yd.jpg-large](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CI_Fh1FUAAAv7yd.jpg-large.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CI_Fh1FUAAAv7yd.jpg-large.jpg)

After the pitches were over, we given 5 stickers to stick posters that had been hastily assembled by the pitchers. I think that the idea of this was to gauge the popularity of the project but im not sure exactly how that affected things in the end.

Also this was apparent the point that you were supposed to be looking to join one of the teams too. I didnt realize this and I spent ages walking around and deliberating while groups of people started separating and disappearing.

The problem was, none of the projects really jumped out at me. The only pitch that grabbed my attention was by a guy that wanted to predict if you are going to win a court case by looking at old case documents, I thought that one sounded pretty interesting but unfortunately I couldn't find him anywhere, and none of the organizers could find him either.

In the end I ended up wandering around for about 30 minutes like a lost lamb as everyone started to form teams. In sheer desperation I started butting into the teams and asking what they were doing and if they needed a developer. After a couple times trying this I was about to give up and go home when I decided to try one more team. These guys were planning on building a app that asked the simple question, should I drive or take public transport to my destination?

I thought this idea seemed simple enough, plus it sounded like something I could help out on, I knew front-end and back-end, had built web and mobile apps before so I signend up.

[![CI_Y6mkUEAAG2fh.jpg-large](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CI_Y6mkUEAAG2fh.jpg-large-1024x652.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CI_Y6mkUEAAG2fh.jpg-large.jpg)

I think I got really lucky. They turned out to be a truly awesome bunch of people. There were 7 of us in total: Jake, the team leader and front end developer. Cam, the back-end dude with lots of experience with mapping and spacial data. Kim, the data miner and wrangler. Felix, a young but incredibly bright lad who did a bit of everything (including winning the young-and-up-coming guy to watch out for award). James, and his friend Apara who did the super important job of organizing the project and video. And of-course me, who took the role of tooling / data converter / uploader / production / whatever else needed doing.

It was the right mix of skills, ages and experience and over the next 3 days we had a ball. We were asked at one point by one of the VIPs / guests that was walking around how everything was working, who was deciding what needed doing etc.

Well that was a good question. It all just seemed to come together. One of us would say "oh, wouldnt it be cool if it could do X?" then we would all agree and then one person would go off and get the data while others did others set about converting it and uploading it.

We were told to put a lot of effort into the video as that would be the thing the national judges would use to choose who their winners were (national prizes are separate from the local WA prizes and were worth \$80k). So right from the start we were scripting and planning the video.

It all kind of came together on the Sunday morning when we filmed it all and produced the following:

<iframe width="700" height="500" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hgfu31GtvQk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I am pretty proud that we were able to not only build a working app that uses the various data sets but were also able to produce the video in the very limited time. Hopefully it conveys the purpose of the app well and maybe also shows you a little bit about the team and how much fun we all had.

We weren't quite done tho as we still had to do a live presentation to a panel of judges. We had 3 minutes to show what we had, then a little more time for questions from the judges.

[![2015-07-05 16.52.41](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-07-05-16.52.41-1024x1024.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-07-05-16.52.41.jpg)

Personally I felt that this one probably the worst part of the event. There were 20 teams presenting, we were number 14\.

We had been told that it was supposed to be 3 minutes long however it seemed like the first 3 or 4 teams were going way way over that, 10-15 minutes each.

For some reason they changed their policy half way through so now you had exactly 3 minutes and were clapped off when the buzzer sounded. It seemed a little unfair to us who werent included in the earlier set of presentations.

Also the presentations were plagued with audio / visual difficulties thanks to the fact that we had to continually plug and unplug laptops. Presentation and demos that worked fine on a 15" laptop looked terrible or didnt work when switched to a projector resolution.

So most teams seemed rushed, unorganized and generally let all their hard work down by failing to properly present what they had done. The judges also probably didnt get a good feel for what the projects were about or what the problem was they were trying to solve.

Some teams simply played their 3 minute video then asked for questions at the end. Personally I think this worked much better as there was much less to go wrong, plus you had already spent a whole bunch of time on the video, you may as well let it do the talking instead of you. I wish we had done this.

Nevertheless our presentation went okay, nothing too major went wrong (apart from from projector issues) but we just didn't have enough time to do the project justice.

After all the presentations, the judges disappeared for 45 minutes while they deliberated, enough time to grab a beer, then the awards started.

[![CJJboKPUkAE8Wnm.jpg-large](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CJJboKPUkAE8Wnm.jpg-large.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CJJboKPUkAE8Wnm.jpg-large.jpg)

There were \$35,000 up for grabs in prizes over several different categories. You were supposed to elect which prizes you were going for on your project page, some teams chose to select most if not all of the prizes. [We went for 16 of the prizes](https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/should-i-drive).

In the end we ended up winning 2 of them including the single largest prize: [Main Roads Keep WA Moving Prize](https://hackerspace.govhack.org/prize_entries/main-roads-keep-wa-moving-prize) of $2,500\. In total we won $3,000 between us which was great, not the best but not the worst.

[![2015-07-06_19-07-28](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-07-06_19-07-28.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-07-06_19-07-28.jpg)

For me tho, it wasn't about the prizes (in fact I didn't even know there was any cash prizes when I entered), it was more about getting out there and meeting other like-minded people who wanted to work together and build something new and cool and perhaps learn a thing or two about the WA data along the way.

I think I succeeded in that modest goal 10 fold and am incredibly grateful to GovHack and my team for letting me be a part of it.

[![Team shot](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Team-shot-1024x768.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Team-shot.jpg)