Our experience from the recent EOS Hackathons

Our journey started in Hong Kong as technical mentors. The EOS hackathons are very well organised and there is a lot of effort and planning put in to make them a success. We got to meet people of similar interests from all over the world which is not common in South Africa. We have struggled to find people that are interested and technically capable in this industry. So it was eye opening and exciting to see how big the EOS community can be. At the event we were teaching and providing assistance anyway we could but at the same time we learned and expanded our knowledge even more. We learned from other mentors, employees from Block.one and from the participants of the hackathon. There was such an abundance of wealth in that room it was great opportunity and we were fortunate to be part of it.

Our next stop was the hackathon in London where we went as participants. We wanted to see what was on the other side of the wall. For most of our team members this was the first taste of a hackathon and for all of us it was the first time participating. There is a new sense of pressure when the challenge is revealed and the large clock begins counting down from 26 hours. London once again showed us how big the EOS community was and that we were not alone. It felt like it took us way too long to come up with a project to build at the event and once we started to work on our project, eosGuardian, time seemed to fly by far to quickly. We also ran into a few technical issues and it felt like the simplest task put up so much resistance. In the end we were happy with what we accomplished. All the projects that we saw at the event were impressive at it was amazing again to see what could be done is such a short time.

Next stop was closer to home, in fact it we did the event at home (our local office). This time we were excited to participate in the EOS Africa virtual hackathon. The event was slightly different in that it was over 4 days and it was all co-ordinated online and decentralised. We thought that there would be less pressure because there was more time but this was not the case. New challenges and new obstacles needed to be overcome and by the end of the 4 days we were exhausted. This time around however we felt more confident and we were able to provide a more complete project, Ukuchuma.

For those that are interested to find our more about the projects have a look at our Github repo https://github.com/EOSZAio. Our journey still continues and we are constantly moving forward and expanding our knowledge as the EOSIO platform and community grows, so do we.