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Metal Toad Hackathon - A unique (non-technical) experience

Written by Marília Bedoya, Director of Operations and HR | May 8, 2020 12:00:00 AM

Have you ever felt happy, nervous, motivated and excited in just 48 hours? If your answer is no you have never participated in a hackathon before! I’m so happy I was able to experience joining a hackathon team, and to be honest (as it was my first hackathon) I had no idea what to expect.

This experience helped me to grow and learn, as I was able to see in practice some of the AWS services that I know in theory. 

You may be asking yourself if I have any experience coding. Well, the answer is ABSOLUTELY NO! So my first thoughts attending the hackathon were that it sounded like a painful and embarrassing situation, but I was completely wrong. 

My team worked very well. Everyone was extremely helpful, supportive and organized. Our goal was to create an app that was called YouToad, a type of video uploader/player in which we used React, AWS Amplify, AWS Media Services and Javascript (along with a bit of Python). The team spent many hours coding and I kept my fingers crossed on each test, but in the end, fortunately everything came out as planned.

I really appreciate all the time and hard work that the YouToad team and everyone else involved put into this!