VTHacks: 2014

After a twelve hour drive, we finally made it to Virginia Tech. The way up was riddled with chats about what hack we were going to do and how we would incorporate what technologies into it.

My teammate and I decided to make an Android app while we were there. It would be weather-based, and it would be a small daily tool. Thus the idea for Weather Squid was born.

When we actually got to Virginia Tech, there was a lot of issues with the Wifi which halted our development process by a full two hours. They promised that we would have gigabit wifi and would be among "600+ hackers", neither of which was the case. I'd wager that there was a maximum of 200 people (that's me being generous with numbers, there) in that room with us. That's counting the people that left, too.

In the end, the award ceremony consisted of a team that made a product called "LockBox" that won literally every award. Oh, and two middle-school students got a pat on the back for "never giving up once during the entire hackathon". They weren't even allowed to be there because high school students were allowed on a case-by-case with special exceptions... A lot of us were perplexed and/or disappointed. We had seen them playing LoL, and a lot of us worked non-stop, with out only breaks being short and to keep our sanity or while our code was compiling.

Overall the experience was enjoyable and I would consider going back again. Plus I got to see one of my good friends again. I like going to hackathons. They're tons of fun.

Information about WeatherSquid will be posted, and we plan to move forward with the development process. Just... maybe after a little break from programming for 36 hours straight.

Update:
We never did move forward with development, and the team eventually drifted our separate ways. Unfortunately, this means the end of Weather Squid.