This weekend I have the honor of participating and the #INCapitolHack hosted by the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce. While I’ll be typing up another post about my experience and what we did. I wanted to take the time to type up what was in my bag for the event, to help new comers feel prepared for going to their first hackathon.
Being my first hackathon I wasn’t to sure what I might need or should bring so I made sure to have a little big of everything.
Electronic wise I was sporting:
- 13" MacBook Air (Yes is provides plenty of power for web dev, although I wish for better resolution)
- iPad Mini (For testing responsive design on an actual mobile browser
- Nexus 6 (taking photo)
- Moto360 Watch
Tech wise I was pretty covered, I only used my iPad for about 10 minutes, but not knowing the teams goals I didn’t know how mobile we would be set on. I’ll end up bringing it to the next one as things might change.
Electronic Accessories included:
- Razer BlackWidow TE Keyboard (Green)
- Apple Magic Mouse
- LG Mobile Wireless Mouse
- LG Bluetooth headphones
- Generic wired ear buds
- 8GB Flash Drive
- Google Fi Power Brick
- Cat 5e cable and Ethernet adapter
For the accessories I’m happy to have had my keyboard, I type much better/quicker on it than the cheaper laptop keyboard. As well two mice was a good plan, as my Magic Mouse decided to keep disconnecting from my laptop while I was there so I ended up switching to the LG. Although I was working in a team you go on sprints where you have a job and need to get it done, rocking out to some good tunes helps me keep going so the head phones are a must for me, although I would only keep on bud in at a time. The flash drive and power brick are also great haves, like the iPad things change, although my team was well organized and used GitHub for all of our code sharing and Slack for some quick code sharing I saw teams less organized and having issues with code sharing. We where also lucky to have amazing wifi making pulls and pushes quick and easy. The power brick was nice to have as you never know what the power situation is going to be like and the MacBook Air only has 2 usb ports. As for my Cat5e and adapter I would probably leave those at home next time. However, they are normally just in my laptop bag so I left them in
Non Tech Accessories:
- Multicolor pin, Black pin
- My Normal take-with-me notepad
- Larger notepad used for design work
Not much on the non-tech accessories. I’ll end up leaving my larger notepad and MC pin at home next time. One thing I learned in a hackathon is you have no time. design concepts and work is done on the fly. Although my take-with-me notepad will always stay in my bag. I highly recommend one. You get some QA with the judges and other talks worth taking notes in. As well just taking in a new team of people you learn new things and stuff to research later and its good to have something to write it all down in.