Not just hacking!
Scottish Summit Hackathon 2022 was held in the Strathclyde University Innovation Centre. It was very well attended by both seasoned professionals and new entrants to the Dynamics and Power Platform Community.
As with the Summit itself, the them of the Hackathon would be Accessibility. We were very fortunate to have Microsoft’s Accessibility Lead, Dona Sarkar and her team in attendance to provide guidance. They would also judge the final solutions and determine our winners!
In addition to leading a team, I was also asked to deliver a short talk on my journey in tech. This would hopefully inspire newcomers and motivate them to pursue careers in Dynamics and the Power Platform.
Team Yellow
I was the team lead for the Yellow team, and had made some preparations for this! Prior to the event we were shown our team mascots, and could earn ‘points’ for weaving them into our day. Our mascot was a stuffed penguin, who I named Marconi as he very much resembled a ‘macaroni’ penguin.
Not being one to underplay a situation, I’d had a T-Shirt printed (yellow obviously) and some stickers made in his image.
I was joined on the day by 2 absolute superstars, Martin McMahon and Tom Ashworth. Not only are they really lovely, fun guys, they are also Power Platform geniuses! This meant that while they were working their magic, the least technical of us (me) could focus on the ‘lightening challenges’.
A little lightening relief ...
To make sure we were all having maximum fun as well as working hard at our task, a few ‘lightening challenges’ were introduced. By participating in the challenges, teams could earn more ‘points’ and of course have more fun!
We really loved the first challenge which was to help code a penguin game, and completed that very quickly. This obviously thanks more to my amazing team mates. I felt I had to do my bit by taking a picture of myself and our mascot in a strange situation for the second challenge. And the three of us came up with the most amazing Lego ‘free roaming wild haggis’ for the third!
It was great fun, and while we didn’t win the overall hack, it was a fantastic day. And we learned a lot about Accessibility as well.