HackRice was a very interesting experience. At the time, it seem like Rafa and I were the only ones that were interested in hackathons to the point we would actually travel to another university to participate. It would be at HackRice where we would meet many new friends and make strong connections that would be important in the future.
Coulton, a talented freshman also from Texas A&M, who would join us in future hackathon events. We also met Zo from University of Texas.
While we waited for things to start, we met representatives from Venmo, another student from MIT, and Zo from University of Texas who both joined our team the next day. It's funny how small talk can lead to future connections. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to be friendly and open to conversation. One can learn many things just from talking with other people. The night went on with long presentations about how to use different APIs from the small groups of companies that were there which included Google, Venmo, and Twilio. There was even a girl from Google who was present when the Internship movie was shot. After the event, we went home to get ready for the next day thinking about what to create at the event.
We had our team set and our idea ready to go.
This is our final product: The Ante App. Despite the fact that we didn't win anything, it was definitely a learning experience. We met so many people and got to experience first hand the lows and ups of having a diverse team.
