Last August, my husband and I left our life in NYC (and my career as a corporate attorney) to travel the world and work remotely - read more about my life as a digital nomad here. Since August, we have completed a 10-Day Vipassana Course in India and traveled to Cambodia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Panama, The Philippines and Bali. Before heading back to the U.S. at the end of July (to make an annual pilgrimage to Black Rock City), we will round out our travels in this part of the world with stops in Sydney, Singapore and Tokyo. We have worked on myriad of projects - digital marketing, app development, consulting, blockchain consulting, crypto investing and real-estate management. During this time, I also completed a Codecademy course focused on HTML/CSS and became a Yoga Alliance yoga instructor. Whoa - it’s really been a whirlwind 10 months.
Over the last ~6 months we have been diving deep into the blockchain space - expanding our knowledge about the technology and starting to develop dApps. So, when we found out that block.one was launching a global series of EOS hackathons, starting in Hong Kong around the same time that our 60-day visa in Indonesia was about to expire - it was a no-brainer for us to attend. The total prizes awarded at the Hong Kong Hackathon totaled $144k with the winning teams earning a chance to compete in the grand finale in December, where the winning team will take home $500k.
A few of our friends from Bali decided to join us in Hong Kong and also attend the hackathon, so we rented a small 2 bedroom airbnb apartment in Wan Chai. The hackathon was at the Kai Tak cruise terminal - the space was huge and there were windows on either side, with beautiful views of the bay and city skyline. When we entered the room, they were serving an impressive breakfast (which included black truffle eggs) and gave out some serious swag (Patagonia jacket, Moleskin backpack, t-shirt, hate, portable charger, usb thumb drive, S’well water bottle & Moleskin notebook).
Daniel, Brandon and I decided that we would work together during the hackathon. With teams capped at 5, we set out to find 1-2 additional members, ideally some engineers with C++ experience to help build out our smart contract on the EOS platform. Right before the opening ceremony, we recruited two additional team members: Walter (a developer from Hong Kong with Javascript & C++ experience) and Smith, a C++ engineer from Shenzhen, China.
This was my first hackathon, so I don’t have much to compare it to, but I heard from AngelHack staff that this hackathon was among the highest production value hackathons they had ever conducted. The event started with a short video introduction from block.one CTO Dan Larimer (it was a bit of a let down that he didn’t make it to the event in person). The MC for the weekend was channeling Tony Robbins and made his grand entrance running down the aisles from the back of the crowd. The crowd was surrounded by 3 massive LED walls and the back of the “arena” was a seriously professional camera/filming section. It was full. on.
We spent some time brainstorming and settled on a peer-to-peer data marketplace app - connecting directly connecting suppliers and consumers of data in a decentralized and secure way, using the EOS blockchain. It was the birth of NeXeos
It was a big idea, but that’s what we thought it would take to have a real shot at winning. You can take the girl out of NYC, but you can’t take the NYC out of the girl. No amount of travel, meditation or yoga will take away my drive for success and innate competitive nature. We knew that 26 hours was probably not enough time to create the entire eco-system, so we decided to focus on just creating a marketplace where buyers and sellers could exchange tokens (saving the data upload/download from the blockchain for another day). If we could build a fully functioning “piece” of our eco-system - that would be a huge success.
I took the lead on the design and front-end development of our dApp. I was excited and also terrified. I had designed a few other websites and mobile apps in Sketch, but nothing with this tight of a time frame. And, on the development side, I had only built two simple website. This was definitely a big undertaking. But, true magic doesn’t happen when you stay within your comfort zone. So here goes.
I drafted the initial design using Sketch. There were two main pages that we envisioned for our prototype: a landing page and a marketplace page for buyers to search & buy data. Eventually, we would need a seller dashboard where sellers could upload and price data, but that was not in the scope of this hackathon. I also created a logo and a couple infographics that would be included in the landing page to help users better understand the dApp (and copied in this article).
After a couple hours working from our team table - I was ready for a change of scenery. I like to move around or switch between cafes when I work as it helps re-energize me. I quickly realized how lucky our group was to have snagged a table. The hackathon was oversubscribed (I heard they actually turned dozens of people away due to limited capacity) and many teams were huddled around in the lounge area (on couches, seated around the ping-pong table or sitting on the floor). In total, there were ~90 teams (of 3-5 people each)!
There was a pretty constant supply of food throughout the day: hot meals with decent vegetarian options for lunch and dinner, snacks (fruit, popcorn, chips, cookies, chocolates), plus a late night snack of lasagna and small muffins. The coffee bar was open throughout the entire 26+ hour hackathon, serving drip coffee, tea, espresso, lattes, cappuccinos, orange juice, perrier & soda. There was also a slumber lounge! They constructed a completely enclosed room within the large convention-center-like room. Inside, it was completely dark. The room was pretty big and was equipped with tons of oversized bean-bags and pillows. They really had thought of almost everything.
Throughout the first day, there were a series of break-out sessions geared toward various members of the team: (1) Technical Breakout (C++), (2) Pitch Workshop, (3) Technical Breakout (Wedb/UX), (4) Entrepreneur Breakout. In addition to these sessions, there were an army of “mentors” that were available throughout the event. Some of the mentors included: John MacMenamin (Director of User Experience at block.one), Suchet Dhindsa (COO at Everipedia), Christian Dunst (VP of engineering at block.one). The mentors were life-savers. They were all so friendly and eager to help. I can’t speak more highly of the caliber of the mentors.
By the end of the first day, I had completed the front-end development of two pages: the Landing Page and the Marketplace. There were definitely moments when I hit a brick wall or felt like throwing in the towel. I still had a long way to go in my coding knowledge and at times I felt like I was reinventing the wheel. But, I persisted. And, at the end of the day I had something that I created and was proud to call my own. And, around 2am I found a comfortable bean bag in the slumber zone to catch few hours of sleep.