How I Spent My First 30 Hours in Las Vegas

What a weekend! My first InnoJam was quite an experience. This was my first time to Las Vegas as well and I spent my first 30 hours there attending a hackathon. Who knew you could spend your whole weekend in Vegas coding…well all the cool kids do! We had an amazing group of attendees, who were a joy to work with all weekend. From the minute they got their challenges, they were off to the races.

Many teams started they’re brainstorming on Saturday night right after the Kickoff Celebration ended. Teams grabbed a beer and staked their claim on a table and flip board to start design thinking for their solutions. When it was time to close the doors for the night, many teams did not want to leave.

On Day 1 of InnoJam, I saw teams using so many different technologies. It was so neat to see how SAP can be integrated with everything from IOT sensors to a HoloLens. A lot of teams were building native mobile apps as well.

One team that really blew my mind was a group of students who had just met each other the day before and no one on their team had any coding experience. But yet at hour 12 of InnoJam, they had a fully functioning native mobile app! It was amazing to see how much they learned and accomplished over the 30-hour competition. I got to be a judge for their final product, and it blew the whole judging panel away to see how far they had come in such a short time.

But that was just 1 team. All 10 teams presented truly amazing and interesting solutions to some really tough challenges we threw their way. It was hard just to pick the final 6 to move on to DemoJam because each team brought an innovative solution to a difficult, real-world challenge.

Thanks to all of our participants for coming out and showing off your coding chops. It was so much fun to be a part of and I can’t wait to see what Bangalore and Barcelona have in store!