February 2019 was a month full of new experiences for me - I was out of my comfort zone a lot and I am proud of myself for doing that. It definitely didn't feel as "busy" as January, but it was still a pretty decently crowded month!
BizHacks 2019
We kick off the very first day of February with BizHacks 2019! The entire event was pretty exciting and though my team and I went in blind we resurfaced on the other side with a whole new experience under our belts. For the uninitiated, BizHacks is the lovechild of a traditional hackathon and case competition - you can choose from a selection of cases released on the day of the competition and develop a solution within x hours.
My team consisted of Candice, Daniel, Heather, Raymond, and I, with me being the only tech-oriented member. For us we had 24 hours to rack our brains at UBC, and we had no idea what the next 24+ hours had in store for us.
We check in at about 4pm and after settling in and doing a bit of room scouting we have dinner at 6pm. At this point it's only four out of five pieces of Exodia as Candice is away doing a midterm, but by the time she arrives at 8pm we've got a pretty good idea of which cases we want to tackle. With all members present we go full throttle into building our solution until around 11:30pm.
We take a break from the work to ask a mentor for his input on our work so far and he reacts very positively to it. Team morale skyrockets and we decide to ask another mentor for a second opinion.
And that's when The Great Calamity happens.
The second mentor (nothing against him at all, he helped bring us back into reality) absolutely picks apart our approach to the case, with the main critique being a lack of technological innovation.
We've got about 16 hours left in the competition at this point so all hope isn't lost, but we get pretty mopey and depressed after that roller coaster of emotion. Heather retreats to slumber soon after and the rest of us try to do some damage control in a futile attempt.
This part is pretty much a blur to me; I felt awful because I had just been eating pepperoni sticks, beef jerky, and granola bars the entire night, I didn't bring my toothbrush, and I'm pretty sure I was dehydrated. Around 2am the rest of us follow Heather's lead and try to get some sleep in hopes that we can wake up and do something in the morning. Raymond fashions a bed out of the chairs, as does Candice, and I sit in one and shut my eyes.
I manage to fall asleep for about half an hour before I wake up again. My rustling alerts Daniel, who is still awake at this point. Before we had given up to go sleep we had been talking about how to incentivize customers to install our app, so uses a still half asleep me as a board to bounce ideas off of.
At some point I get frustrated and start working on a mockup of an app, just so that we have something to hand in when the competition ends at 4pm, and well, things just took off from there. The app looks alright and as the other members wake up they are on board. By 8am we are back in working mode, with each of us working away at some part of our presentation.
In retrospect our idea was not groundbreaking or super cool, but we pulled off something. We made a (in my opinion) killer presentation and while maybe our submission was not anything special, I think the audience really liked the way we put it out. I feel bad for letting the team down in terms of the tech, but in the end it is what it is, and I am glad I had the chance to do the event with them.
Unfortunately we didn't make it onto the second round, but I learned a lot of things from BizHacks 2019. I learned that you definitely need an experienced "techie" (which I was not) for any hackathon-related events. I learned that team morale is a very important thing and you should never overwork yourself because you will just burn out. I learned that a diet of various cured meats and clementines will make your stomach unhappy. And I learned that you should always bring a toothbrush and change of comfortable clothes to these things.
Thanks again to my favourite OLs
David, Kim, Shirley, Tiff, you guys are awesome. It's crazy to think that I might have never met you guys if it weren't for the fact that I became a Transfer Orientation Leader because I have so much fun whenever I'm with you all.
I already wrote about my adventures in February with these kids, but I just wanted to express my gratitude one more time (also they are now aware of the existence of this blog). Thanks again! I know I say it a lot here, but my life is so much better because of you.
Quickfire round + teasers for March
Alright it's getting kinda late for me so let's fire through the rest of February!
The UBCLOL team hosted UBC Cup League of Legends on February 16 and 17. It was a fun time overall and although we could have done a few things better it was overall well done :) Congratulations to the UBC Premiere team for winning the tournament and shout out to the UBCLOL team for their hard work (and Andrew for driving there and home, god bless). While we're still on the topic of UBCEA, I'm excited to make an announcement in my next post ;)
Austin, Philman, Sarah, and I recorded a podcast episode! It's been something we always joked about doing but we finally did it over the spring reading break. Austin brought his equipment over to my place and podcast aside, it was super fun to dedicate some time to talk about random things with people I love spending time with.
And to finish it off I played some volleyball during the last weekend of February. My love for volleyball has somewhat resurfaced, but I'm still pretty rough around the edges so it's been a learning experience for me. It feels amazing to spend a few hours at some remote volleyball center and just get away from the everyday stress of school and work.
March coming soon :))
February was hard to type up so I'm pretty surprised that I finished all of it just now. Overall a very solid month from me. I did not do the 16Personalities test at the end of February so we will be missing one month of data, but I will do one tomorrow (I guess today now) for March for sure.
Thank you for tuning in and sorry for the one month wait. Look forward to seeing you back here for our March post :)))
My team consisted of Candice, Daniel, Heather, Raymond, and I, with me being the only tech-oriented member. For us we had 24 hours to rack our brains at UBC, and we had no idea what the next 24+ hours had in store for us.
We check in at about 4pm and after settling in and doing a bit of room scouting we have dinner at 6pm. At this point it's only four out of five pieces of Exodia as Candice is away doing a midterm, but by the time she arrives at 8pm we've got a pretty good idea of which cases we want to tackle. With all members present we go full throttle into building our solution until around 11:30pm.
We take a break from the work to ask a mentor for his input on our work so far and he reacts very positively to it. Team morale skyrockets and we decide to ask another mentor for a second opinion.
And that's when The Great Calamity happens.
The second mentor (nothing against him at all, he helped bring us back into reality) absolutely picks apart our approach to the case, with the main critique being a lack of technological innovation.
We've got about 16 hours left in the competition at this point so all hope isn't lost, but we get pretty mopey and depressed after that roller coaster of emotion. Heather retreats to slumber soon after and the rest of us try to do some damage control in a futile attempt.
This part is pretty much a blur to me; I felt awful because I had just been eating pepperoni sticks, beef jerky, and granola bars the entire night, I didn't bring my toothbrush, and I'm pretty sure I was dehydrated. Around 2am the rest of us follow Heather's lead and try to get some sleep in hopes that we can wake up and do something in the morning. Raymond fashions a bed out of the chairs, as does Candice, and I sit in one and shut my eyes.
I manage to fall asleep for about half an hour before I wake up again. My rustling alerts Daniel, who is still awake at this point. Before we had given up to go sleep we had been talking about how to incentivize customers to install our app, so uses a still half asleep me as a board to bounce ideas off of.
At some point I get frustrated and start working on a mockup of an app, just so that we have something to hand in when the competition ends at 4pm, and well, things just took off from there. The app looks alright and as the other members wake up they are on board. By 8am we are back in working mode, with each of us working away at some part of our presentation.
In retrospect our idea was not groundbreaking or super cool, but we pulled off something. We made a (in my opinion) killer presentation and while maybe our submission was not anything special, I think the audience really liked the way we put it out. I feel bad for letting the team down in terms of the tech, but in the end it is what it is, and I am glad I had the chance to do the event with them.
Unfortunately we didn't make it onto the second round, but I learned a lot of things from BizHacks 2019. I learned that you definitely need an experienced "techie" (which I was not) for any hackathon-related events. I learned that team morale is a very important thing and you should never overwork yourself because you will just burn out. I learned that a diet of various cured meats and clementines will make your stomach unhappy. And I learned that you should always bring a toothbrush and change of comfortable clothes to these things.
 |
| You can feel the despair |
Thanks again to my favourite OLs
David, Kim, Shirley, Tiff, you guys are awesome. It's crazy to think that I might have never met you guys if it weren't for the fact that I became a Transfer Orientation Leader because I have so much fun whenever I'm with you all.
I already wrote about my adventures in February with these kids, but I just wanted to express my gratitude one more time (also they are now aware of the existence of this blog). Thanks again! I know I say it a lot here, but my life is so much better because of you.
Quickfire round + teasers for March
Alright it's getting kinda late for me so let's fire through the rest of February!
The UBCLOL team hosted UBC Cup League of Legends on February 16 and 17. It was a fun time overall and although we could have done a few things better it was overall well done :) Congratulations to the UBC Premiere team for winning the tournament and shout out to the UBCLOL team for their hard work (and Andrew for driving there and home, god bless). While we're still on the topic of UBCEA, I'm excited to make an announcement in my next post ;)
Austin, Philman, Sarah, and I recorded a podcast episode! It's been something we always joked about doing but we finally did it over the spring reading break. Austin brought his equipment over to my place and podcast aside, it was super fun to dedicate some time to talk about random things with people I love spending time with.
And to finish it off I played some volleyball during the last weekend of February. My love for volleyball has somewhat resurfaced, but I'm still pretty rough around the edges so it's been a learning experience for me. It feels amazing to spend a few hours at some remote volleyball center and just get away from the everyday stress of school and work.
March coming soon :))
February was hard to type up so I'm pretty surprised that I finished all of it just now. Overall a very solid month from me. I did not do the 16Personalities test at the end of February so we will be missing one month of data, but I will do one tomorrow (I guess today now) for March for sure.
Thank you for tuning in and sorry for the one month wait. Look forward to seeing you back here for our March post :)))
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