Startstruck at GBG Startup Hack

(Bilder tagna av den eminenta Dino Soldin)

It is slightly unfair that some people are good looking, well dressed, social, driven, smart AND kick ass at programming. There should be some sort of fairness, made by God or some other almighty power. Well turns out God was on Holiday from time to time and those magic-epic-to-good-to be-true people do exists.

Last weekend most of them were gathered in Gothenburg for GBG Startup hack. I’m not kidding, there were so many talented people there I got slightly starstruck.

4 questions might be raised in your head right now:

1. Does Sofie believe in God?
2. What is a hackathon?
3. What is a startup?
4. What was I doing among all these awesome people at a hackathon in Gothenburg?

Firstly, I do not believe in God or any kind of almighty. I do believe in destiny, sometimes.

A hackathon is a competition where you and your team build something (often related to software, it could be an app or a website for example) during a specific time span. By the end of the hack you present your idea and solution to a jury. A winner is selected, but mostly a hack is about meeting people with the same mindset to share knowledge and experiences.

This time the theme was “Startup”, the event’s  website states it more clearly:

“This hackathon is about igniting the startup community, celebrating creativity and opening up the world of tech to more people”

A startup is when a group of people come together over an idea or problem they want to develop/solve and from that build something and start a company around it. This scene has exploded lately because of the extremely exciting conditions we have in IT and software right now. Anyone with an idea, laptop and a text editor can build a webpage, just with the help of Google. There is so much great tutorials out there so if you want to learn, just Google “How to build a website beginners tutorial” or something similar. Free learning at it’s best, might require some patience though.

I was in Gothenburg to help out since my fellow colleagues in Spotify Street Team for Chalmers were part of organizing the whole thing. I must say I was overwhelmed over how well structured the event was, how many cool people attended, what they managed to come up with in just 10 hours and how much fun I had. I love my job! Below getting my ass kicked for the 55 time in fifa …

If you’re curious about what the teams competing came up with, have a look at this summary for a short recap from some of the teams.

A confession: I was actually a bit nervous about attending, I’ve never been to a hack before. How does it even work? Well, all that nervousness was completely unnecessary, just go with the flow and ask if it is something you don’t understand. Don’t worry about not being smart enough, as I said in my previous post: You will never become the best at something if you don’t dare to suck at it at first.

Thank you Gothenburg, the organizers, the hackers and Spotify for an unbelievably inspiring weekend.

// Starstruck Sofster