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It took 5 nights

for my guard to fell,

for my head to swim in uncertainty,

for my battered up heart to open up again for the pain

When will the bleeding stop?

make it stop

make it better

make me ok again

Call me

Write me

Talk to me

I’m not ready to say goodbye

I’m not ready to say that it was

just a dream,

just a memory

just something temporary

Were we ever in the same page in life?

Did we even had a chance if I hadn’t given those 5 nights freely?

Could the story be different if I had guarded my heart more so?

I’ve always wondered - why did I let you in so easily?

Was it your smile?

Was it your mind?

Was it because you reminded me of a past love?

Why did I crave your touch,

Your musky smell

Your laughters

Your voice...

Naive I call myself whenever I fell again,

I tell myself that it was physicality that attracted me so...

was it your body?

Your warm body encasing mine

Was it your mouth?

Your mouth slowly dancing mine

Was it your mind?

Your mind sparring with mine

But in the end - none of it mattered

I’m not ready to cut the cord between us

To forget those 5 magical nights between us

To simply regard us as something that

could’ve, would’ve

But it pains me so

I have to

I need to

this may have saved my battered heart from being broken into a thousand pieces

this may have stopped me from falling even deeper

So goodbye

Thank you for leaving me a memory

Thank you for teaching me to better guard my heart

Thank you for pushing me to pick up the pen and paper

And

You asked me in the evening why I desired for a rainstorm during this fertile season.

And I thought to myself

Is the earth,

the ground,

the burning and warm sun,

the seeds I’ve planted not enough?

You asked me again on an afternoon why I want a brewing storm at a time when everything is just enough, ordinary, safe

But that afternoon you asked me

I had realized that the path I took everyday on an ordinary night

with the moon shining brightly upon us

with the luminous city lights guiding us

Has never felt so out of the ordinary

That normal walk had suddenly

became different,

became magical,

became colorful...

You have become an addiction

Your fingertips exploring my ridges

Your peppering kisses against my lips

Your ideas and philosophy sparing with mine

And things like

Your warmness,

Your laughters,

Your words,

Your honesty,

They give me joy

They satiate me

Our notion for modern romance has descended into convenience

We swipe right for yes

We swipe left for no

Possibilities in finding love are endless in this system

This system comprised of troves

of data,

of micro services,

of logic

I swipe,

I message,

I wait

But what is it that I’m waiting for from this genie?

What is it that I desire the most?

Why do I subjugate myself to continue playing when I know that the chance for failure is higher than I wish?

Is it because of our innate nature to find a partner for procreation,

to satisfy our cravings during the dead of the night,

to be inspired

to put a checkmark from that list?

Yes, i’ve been kissed

Yes, i’ve lost my virginity

Yes, i’ve had a serious boyfriend

Yes, i’ve had my heart broken

Experiences?

What is it about finding love so alluring?

So enticing?

Is it because of the

Media?

The bachelor?

Society?

When you know it can consume your heart and soul,

When you know that you have to pick up the broken pieces he had left behind

But despite all these uncertainties...

All I know is that love

can’t be quantified,

can’t be put in a circular square,

can’t be put in some timeline

All I know is that love

becomes a breathe of fresh air during a sandstorm

becomes a warm blanket come winter

It’s patient

It’s kind

Entrenched in sands, Mind buried, Thoughts harrowing, Losing battle Falling out of despair, Loneliness grapples blackened heart, Hopes crushed, Dreams darkening, Wallowing poison to keep dark thoughts at bay

For she went anew

For she went astray For she went lost The forest? The sky? The mind? Gone just like that Her whispers start to fade away as days turn to weeks, Weeks turn to years, Years turn to decades... Sadness pools Life Death Gone like that sweet lullaby Her memories of greatness buried deep in earth’s core

As I code, code, code

I fear that I may be going mad

The lines of my beloved editor keeps giving be these fucking red flags,

Taunting me to correct them.

And,

The Variable names and method headers I've written has slowly transformed into obfuscate shit before my eyes.

Damn, what happened to naming conventions I started with?

I don't know anymore,

The design I thought to be perfect, starts whispering otherwise.

I code, code, code and I find loopholes that I don't consider

Shit, I'm screwed...

Project is expected soon and the requirements are not yet complete.

The fuck should I do?

I say, take a breathe, relax, play some music.

The joys of mornings

My body aches everywhere

When I move, it pains me to turn and shift

When I stir to the right, my insides cringe

When I stand, I am in need of support

Despite all of these, I ask myself this

Does it seem foolish for me to rejoice of my pain?

Albeit, I cannot spare my desire to make a jester of oneself without my body paining

Or that I cannot enjoy a walk with the companion of warm light and greenery views

Or savor the smell of freshness in the air looting outback

But I afford myself this,

Others say to exercise the

Mind,

Body,

Soul

For that a balanced and hearty life will be bestowed upon oneself

If one take 'too much' indulgence, others will whisper onerous misgivings to thyselves

Well...

Who determines too much indulgence?

Why must opinions of others hold any importance?

Why fail to continue with pride of activities oneself hold?

Why must opinions poison the soul?

Should oneself continue to listen and pray heed of others?

Doing such a thing gives power until one is left,

Empty

Weak

Alone

And so, refute opinions of others

Live as oneself see

Indulge

Hours,

Minutes,

Seconds.

Make. Make. Make.

Why do you fail me?

Why do you show me such things that haunt me?

Why oh why?

My logic is unscrupulous, well, maybe.

Do you hate me that much?

Do I not understand you?

I beg you to follow one of my wishes at least once.

Make. Run.

As I lie at the dead of night with thoughts of my works

Behold, these creations of mine causes much frustration and endless annoyance,

I ask oneself,

Why must things not be simple?

Albeit equipped with advance knowledge of many things,

Mind fails to grasp

This then leads thoughts astrayed

Causes creations to lay bury, no hope in seeing light

Why then, does oneself continue?

Is it naïveté?

Is it pride?

Or simply, is it the character of oneself?

College hackathons will be better than career fairs, marketing tool and sales. They are going to replace them in Universities. Companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and start-ups want students that can think on their feet and be able to explain why they would use this particular design pattern (Design Patterns) than another or why they used Go instead of Java in doing multi-threaded programming or why they would use NoSQL than SQL.

They want students that can design architectures, decide on the best software architecture on the fly, work well with a team and know how to write Clean Code.

These are essential skills no matter where you work - big, small and medium. As I’ve talked to a former extraordinaire VT associate professor in CS that now works in Google as a developer relations - Tony Allevato. Hackathons have a bad rep that gets students to just code code and hook-up a js library to another - without teaching them tips and advice on how to do a better job in designing your project to make it sustainable in the long-run. Coding is easy but teaching software design is a hard task. 

So I’ve spoken to a couple of West Coast hackathon organizers and budding entrepreneurs. There is this lion in the room that many of us don’t want to tackle - will college hackathons reach a peak?  So there is a right and wrong answer to that. Yes it will peak if we don’t address an important concern amongst our potential sponsors or investors. Our major sponsors are our investors, they’re main concerns are either recruiting, branding or marketing their developer tools as Alexey pointed out. So I haven’t had a lot of success with recruiting since VTHacks is the last MLH hackathon in the season and so we basically can’t convince the HR department of our sponsors to give us money since they’re pretty much done recruiting interns and full-time employees.

Thus, Zach Lytle, Chris Williams and Tam Ayers - my mentors/advisors/friends gave me some really good advice on how to approach our sponsors. Don’t spend a lot of time convincing the HR department about your hackathon because many don’t understand the true value - that break, build, break mentality amongst young and eager students. To be honest, there are some that wouldn’t want to spend another 36-48 hours on a weekend to talk to students that don’t have the time to do an interview - the hackers are focused on making their idea come to life. So my advice, talk to developer relations advocate or a developer evangelist about your hackathon because they understand hackathons.

But before you go stalking them on linkedin, make sure that you have a good business plan on how to make them happy/satisfied. After all these are for-profits companies that have mouths to feed so have a plan whether that will be tier sponsorship or what-not because at the end of the day they want to help you out (trust me, they do!) but they have to convince their business department of the return of investments of this event. Once you have a plan, carry it out and make sure you follow-through. Whether this investment is 100K, 50K or what-not, this is a major investment to your event - set clear plans and make sure you actually speak to your major investors on the phone or in person. They are the ones that will more likely to come back again for your next hackathon. So as a conclusion, college hackathons are going to peak if we - hackathon organizers, keep disappointing our sponsors if we promised high participation attendees but gotten a low number of attendees or if the major sponsors did not see a lot of students using or trying their api’s, dev tools, etc..

So for Spring Break, I did something totally radical that my friends and my parents did not anticipate. 

I went on a journey to New York, San Francisco and LA to get more sponsors, network with Developer Evangelists and meet other hackathon organizers from HackSC, HackTech and LAHacks.

I’ve been meaning to visit San Francisco for a long time now and this past week was the perfect opportunity to finally make it happen. All I can say, it’s been hectic and fun. I’m sad that I didn’t get to cross the golden bridge, visit K-town or eat crabs but I’m happy because I met some awesome people, got to talk more about VTHacks and used uber & lyft for the first time!

So I’ve wanted to give some advice to hackathon organizers both veterans and young ones after meeting with Dan from ADI and Swift from MLH in NYC.

Core values matter

As Dan have said it - if you don’t know what your purpose or values in organizing a hackathon in the first place, don’t bother organizing one. It won’t be successful, you need values other than “I want to show-case/show-off how awesome my school is to the rest of the world". 

Values matter a lot. Dan mentioned that the founders of CodeAcademy are actually Columbia students that started ADI because they were passionate about spreading the ‘hacker’/‘builder’ community amongst every one.

They are successful because they’ve set their values straight up from the beginning. To be honest, your values and goals will make your and everyone's life easier when things start becoming messy and hairy. 

So just to give you an example of the VTHacks family values, all of the members know that Blacksburg does not have a big hacker culture like Michigan or Berkeley. And the VTHacks team wants to change it.

When we speak to our sponsors or anyone in the street about our story, we tell them that VTHacks is the catalyst in sparking a hacker community.  We're going to try and get  quadcopters, google glasses, pebbles, emotiv and any other cool gadgets, frameworks and cloud services out there in the industry because we want to spark students' curiosity and passion in Tech. 

In addition, we're hoping to even out the playing field in Universities and Colleges by taking out the overhead administration and just give every student a chance to check out the exciting things that is happening in Tech.

So before you decide to make a hackathon, make sure that your team is in sync with your core values. Trust me, they go a long way and make your lives easier.