#craftathon

As usual, the rules are as follows;

-Only work on project while the movie/show/media is playing

-check in on progress after each segment is done with a time stamp

-try to finish the project before the media runs out

This past weekend Fotisi was involved with a Minecraft charity event called Craftathon. A community event through the game Minecraft to raise funds for the Child’s Play Charity. We had the unique opportunity to partner and support this event, including donating one hundred dollars.

I would like to thank Mistri for organizing such an amazing event that impacts kids all over the globe. And thank all of the developers and administrators that had a countless amount of sleepless nights this past month getting the servers ready for all the special guests, partners and donors connecting on for 36+ hours.

Even though this was the very first Craftathon, it didn’t feel like it. Everyone was very professional, on point and frequently communicating to attendees about updates. I am still shocked on how much was raised pasted the original goal, over six thousand two hundred dollars. I can see that amount doubling to even tripling next year with a little more promotion.

It was truly awesome to be apart of Craftathon this year and I look forward to working and supporting the event next year. Make sure to check them out over at Craftathon.org or follow them on Twitter @craftathon_mc.

On Friday 4 September, my colleague Ella and I were invited to take part in a Craftathon at Makers Academy, where we had both trained to become web developers. 

A Craftathon is similar to a Hackathon, in so much as you have a brief and need to work quickly as a team over a short period of time to create an answer to said brief. What makes it ‘craft’, rather than ‘hack’ is that you need to have written quality code that has been tested. In Hackathon’s, it does not matter what it looks like under the hood, just that it answers the brief. A Craftathon should give you a minimal viable product, however that product should contain clean code and be bug free.

A cohort of Makers Academy students had recently graduated, so the Craftathon provided them with the perfect opportunity to improve on the skills they had learned over the past 12 weeks, in a more practical environment. 

Four teams of five alumni were given a brief (in the format of a cucumber test) to create a website that will allow people to book trips to the moon. A back end to the site would let the administrators see how many tickets have been booked. 

Ella and I were involved as Product Owners, along with Mark from FNZ, a Financial Tech company that have recruited Makers Academy graduates previously. 

The Craftathon made me think a lot about my processes when coding, either for work or pleasure. There were three points that I took with me from the day: 

Do what needs to be done

Where do you start when starting a new project? This is one of the trickiest things to decide upon when you have finished wire framing. The Craftathon reminded me that the best place to start is with what is most important to your app. 

What made me realise this was that the team I was working with decided to start by creating the log in for the administrative back end of the website. This, you could argue, would make common linear sense, as to log in would be the first thing you would be required to do as an administrator. However, with minimal time, as a Product Owner, I was not interested in the team developing a log in for me, I wanted to see how many tickets to the moon had been sold. I advised the team this should be the first thing they do. 

In a recent app I am developing as a side project, I changed my plan for the next model I was going to add, using this same reasoning. 

Create your code ‘properly’

By the end of the day, I was impressed with how all of the teams had created workable apps with some marvellous css in less than 6 hours. A couple of apps, however, crashed when they were demoed. It happens, particularly in the fast paced world of a Hackathon. This, however, was a Craftathon. 

As one judge pointed out ‘even if you had just created an app that takes a booking from a customer and displays it to the product owner, that is fully tested and working, you would be ahead of the game. Hacking is great fun, and it is always better to get good working code quickly than labour over perfect code (this is what refactoring is for), however using the correct processes (what I mean by ‘properly’) to create robust code will make your life easier as your app develops. 

Even if it is just for fun, there’s nothing wrong with getting into good habits, such as unit and feature testing and committing to GitHub regularly.     

Listen

Whether you are working on a project for yourself or someone else, it is always important to listen and understand what is required, so you can ensure that you can create in as simple fashion as possible. 

When working on your own, this could be considered planning, however by listening to yourself or someone you are working for will always create questions and these questions will help solidify your understanding of what is actually required to make a project a success.

The Craftathon was a lot of fun, and I would like to thank Makers Academy for taking part. It was nice to catch up with everyone there again. Below are some more pictures from the day...

Ella and I with our serious Product Owner faces on

Ella helping the Craftathon participants relax