Well with very little sleep this weekend I am writing this blog as the thoughts of my second Sitecore Hackathon has ended. I was on team SIF Lords. We all love Star Wars and Sitecore if you can’t tell by the name. We came up with a clever idea this year that would combine my running world (Strava) with Sitecore. Just like last year though with a different team my team this year failed to get the needed things in time to qualify. We needed about 26 hours not 24. However just like last year all was not lost. I don’t do these contests to win. It would be nice to win, but there are more important things at play here. So here are my top 5 reasons for failure, but also top 5 reasons why the experience outshines the failures.

Top 5 Failures

Ever year is going to be a learning experience I learned from my failures last year and vowed to not make the same mistakes. Well mostly not the same mistakes. Here are the mistakes this year. Hey, we never stop learning.

1. Not trying to cover all the bases.
   

   Knowing there was a lot introduced in the last year new to Sitecore we probably should have studied each thing we though might be part of the contest that was introduced in Sitecore recently. We instead had ideas and going into the assumption that they would be broad enough to fit in. We were wrong.
   

2. Installing anything in Sitecore that was not out of the box.
   

   Well this one I learned a little from last year. We decided no Glass Mapper and we would use Unicorn instead of TDS. Well I am a huge fan of TDS, but Unicorn was lighter to install and one of our team members had experience with it. I had a little experience with it. This would be a good opportunity to learn it better. Well in the end that did us in. No fault of Unicorn which is a great product btw, we missed a few configurations so we had some syncing issues. Lesson learned. Maybe we just use Sitecore packages next year.
   

3. Not spending enough time mentally preparing.
   

   Working all day and it being a Friday I thought it would wind down gradually and then I would be mentally prepared for the hackathon. Well as everyone knows in the programming world things can get hectic at times. So, by the time I finished work I had to go right into the hackathon. Maybe next year I take a half day off and prepare.
   

4. Not meeting with the group beforehand.
   

   We did have some chatroom talk on Slack and email, but we never had an official phone meeting. Not sure if it would have been beneficial, but it might have helped the brainstorming session go a little quicker.
   

5. Being overconfident.
   

   Hey coding is hard if you don’t know. However, as developers we love to code. Sometimes though when you think you know everything you just don’t. This goes back to number 1. Study anything you can that you are not familiar with.
   

   

Top 5 Experiences

No matter the failures these experiences overcame any failure that happened.

1. I got to learn something new.
   

   The topics introduced to us when the contest started was something we haven’t had experience in it. We came in the contest with all these ideas, but wham we were hit with the reality that none of them will work. So, we picked the path that we hoped we can have the most success on XConnect. Also, as mentioned above I got more experience with Unicorn.
   

2. Crash course into Sitecore 9.
   

   This goes along with learning something new, but it does deserve its own number on the list. Right before the hackathon after several tries I finally got Sitecore 9 installed. I barely had time to play around with it so as my team got coding I had to learn all the new things that come with the latest version of Sitecore.
   

3. Brainstorming a unique idea and executing that idea.
   

   We spent a good hour or two coming up with ideas that could fit into what we wanted to do with XConnect. We hit some dead ends, but finally came up with a pretty solid idea. When you have 24 hours to code something though you don’t exactly know if that idea will work or not until you really get into it. Towards the end the idea looked like it was going to work. Too bad we ran out of time.
   

4. I got to work with co-workers I normally don’t get to.
   

   I am very blessed to be working for a great company. I know one thing that makes the company great are the people working there. I haven’t really worked with these specific co-workers until the hackathon. I didn’t know what they would be like other than talking to them socially. In that 24 hours we were working together as a solid team. I got to know them more and I am sure when we work on an actual project for Paragon we will be even more prepared and cohesive.
   

5. I love the Sitecore world.
   

   Knowing that there are other Sitecore developers crazy like us makes me happy to be part of the family. I think about how much Sitecore has meant to my career and anytime I can be more involved with the it I want to seize the opportunity. There is so much to learn in Sitecore no matter how long you have been using it.
   

   

So now that I am reflecting on my experience will I be back next year? Well when I am running a marathon at mile 20+ I always question myself on why the heck did I decide to do this. I felt the same way with the hackathon in the 20+ hour. However, when it was over I thought yeah, I will do that again just like a marathon. Special thanks to everyone in the Sitecore family that made this year’s Sitecore hackathon special. Most of all to team SIF Lord. Next year we got this. If you like to follow the rest of my team you can find Steve on Twitter here and Jennifer on Twitter here.