We did it. Django Dash for our second year in a row. A little different, but still memorable.
From home
This year we spent the majority working from the comfort of our own homes.
Thanks to Schipul and our decision to move toward a remote work lifestyle we were able to easily face this year’s competiton in style aka in our jammies.
If anything this saved us valuable travel and setup time.
Lessons learned
I said this last year, but I’ll say it again this year; because apparently we did not learn our lesson.
Make as many decisions as possible before the competition. Think roadmap or dare I say clipboard of fun.
One of our greatest strengths is our team. We work together every workday, this competition was no different. I can only imagine the stop-and-go speed of competing on a team that doesn’t know each other.
Not the time to learn
This year I spent some time on two things I’ve only spent a couple of minutes on in the past. The Twitter Bootstrap project and Class Based Views. While my colleagues spent their time learning about Google authentication and the interim their experiencing as they adopt new technologies.
Competition time is definitely not the time to learn new things. It’s just so hard not to. You find yourself inspired and when inspiration strikes all you want to do is strive, learn new things and create.
In the case of Google authentication, it had to be learned. Our project was dependent on it, as always; it’s amazing what you can do when you have to.
I don’t foresee this habit waning any time soon. If anything I look forward to it. I learned a lot of useful things this weekend and I’m left wanting more. Give me that feeling anyday.
Veering from the original mission
Early Sunday morning we found ourselves having to make a choice. A choice between accumilating more points by submitting more commits and focusing on specific code requirements such as standards and creating tests. Or making a product that might actually provide some value to many in the near future.
We chose the latter. The idea of our project actually being useful at more than just collecting points is an honor. With this in mind we refocused and put effort into submitting a finished product that’s worth demoing.
We’ll be demoing our finished 48 hour project to the office and get our first ouside perspective. No matter what people say I’m not-so-secretly wishing we can keep up this momentum and continue improving our project.
What did you build, tell me already!?
Without getting into too much detail – at this point in time – it’s best summarized here. http://theoldmail.com
You can sign up for the site now and take it for a spin. Keep in mind that this was 48 hours of code. You might find some quirks and so-called missing features.
What about the competition?
It’s been said that we get our results some time this week; but as I mentioned before we’re more excited about the project itself and what it can bring to others.
It’s open sourced
One of the rules of the Django Dash competition is that the project itself must remain open sourced. So feel free to take a glance at our code on github.com and fork the code if you’d like to start contributing.