Looking for graphic designers and coders to join virtual hackathon

[CoderMum]

Long time poster under name change: I’m doing a virtual hackathon and thought some folk on here might be interested in getting involved.

My team is Ma Slow and I’m particularly looking for a graphic designer and someone with branding/digital marketing background (or someone enthusiastic to learn on the job). Also Swift coders.

Lots of other great projects available too - descriptions on the site. Registration closes on Friday, and then teams have to organise between themselves to do a big development push to make an innovative tech product across five days 15th-20th October.

It’s sponsored by Moms Can Code - which is an American group set up to support mums who want to learn to code or are coding - to career change or work freelance.

Have a look - it’s a really nice way to make contacts in the industry and build up some experience (and make a cool product to be proud of!)

goo.gl/forms/iT6E40U8YNevUGm32

Bump

No coding experience necessary!

A friendly and fun way to ‘try out’ graphic design for app development - if that might be a direction for your future career.

Bump

That's a lot of bumping in one day

Ha ha - yes - sorry.

Deadline is in 24 hours.

I’m really enthusiastic about it, because I am getting some experience towards a new career without having to pay for childcare. Thought someone else might be keen too!

Final cheeky bump!

How many hours do they need that week?

And also can UK women use Moms can Code? Really interested in learning to code.

‘They’ is me! (Or at least, I’m leading one of the teams)

Normally a ‘hackathon’ is one day everyone in the same room. That’s obviously not practical when you have kids - so this one is five days - and ‘virtual’. We figure out schedules between ourselves to suit ourselves. So probably a daily video call to catch up, and then take away jobs. I’ve actually no idea how much time we’re ‘meant’ to be spending on it - but it’s meant to be fun and not pressury - so I think it’s fine to just make your best effort with the time you have iykwim.

I’ll PM you a bit more info - or feel free to contact me.

Hi- I am interested in more info too, please. Not sure if I will have time to fully assess and make a decision before your deadline though?

And yeah - you can join them from anywhere. And coding is a great career direction for people with caring responsibilities.

The deadline is the organisers’ - midnight New York time.

In any case, feel free to chat. The hackathon is just a fun thing tbh - like an online version of the Apprentice - ha ha. The bigger picture is that it’s really nice to connect with people who are working on similar things to you / have similar goals / have similar challenges.

Ok, I just started a new job so this may not be a good time for me- wouldn't want to let anyone down. Very interested in future stuff though? Background in graphic design, have done some web training and did have some aptitude for code so this looks great. What do Moms etc get out of it though? Rights over the products, or...?

No - teams have full rights over the products.

I followed Moms Can Code for ages on Twitter, and now I pay $8 per month to be a full member, which gets me some free courses, some chatty webinars, access to the forum.... and (this is going to sound really lame - but it’s been a game changer for me in terms of not feeling so isolated WFH and learning online & alone) - there’s this thing where you arrange ‘co-working’ - and you kind of video confenrence call with other ‘coding mums’. I cringed at the concept - but it’s actually really nice and chatty and supportive. And they run ‘events’ like the Hackathon - which obviously anyone can join, but I like being ‘part of’ stuff that opens up coding to women iyswim?

I’m quite evangelical about coding being an empowering self-development direction for SAHM who want to have some quality career options once their kids are older.

So I guess their motivation is to add value for members and recruit new ones.

Oh - and the hackathon also has ‘mentors’ and ‘judges’ - who are women who’ve suceeded in software development.

For me, it’s been worth signing up to the hackathon in order to have an ‘excuse’ to chat to people like that (there’s a Slack group). I’d feel really lame approaching someone ‘cold calling’ - but under the guise of being a very enthusiastic Hackathoner, I’m finding it quite easy to strike up light conversations - and it’s all feeding in to feeling much less isolated in my chosen future career direction.

Would anyone be kind enough to complete the survey for our Hackathon project?

My team is building an app to boost wellbeing in parents with young kids.

www.surveymonkey.com/r/L9DF3KV