assemble

(Dis)Assembling Assemble #6

The day is Friday 12th August, it has been just over 168 hours since the doors opened to Assemble closed and I’m now in Vermont. Wow. What a week.

I’m going to go back to Sam pre-hackathon and then reflect on everything that’s happened since in this final edition of Assembling Assemble. So here’s the story from landing in SF to saying goodbye to everyone.

🛬 Leadup To Event

We (@kara, @msw & I) arrived at SFO on Wednesday at 1pm. I was overwhelmed by this big, new city (that some how I would be running a hackathon in??) and also very nervous. This really showed in this video I filmed attempting to show people how to find the Starbucks (I was totally making it up on the spot).

We made it onto BART and then into the city. SF is hectic, nothing like the smooth-flowing Singapore I’m used to. We made it to the hotel, frantically get ticketing shipped from my 2% charged phone and then I collapsed, for five minutes. And off to Figma!

Our first few hours at Figma were a lot more relaxed. We took a tour, lounged around, unboxed a ton of boxes and brainstormed ideas for a space! Figma’s office really showed me how beneficial a great space can be. For a bit of context, we given full access to 2/4 Figma’s office floors. We had the fifth and the sixth floor. The fifth had been unused for months due to the pandemic and the sixth floor had never been opened before. These floors are located in the majestic Phelan building on Market Street. What a blessing. Back to what I was saying on space, I think that space can be something that can really bring an event alive. Personally, Figma’s office really inspired my creatively and every time I toured the venue with a Hack Clubber they gave a similar response.

Once we’d taken the time to soak in the venue and grab some lunch from The Melt (a new favourite of mine and it seems many other Hack Clubbers!), we met up with @tmb & @Pranav to go to COSTCO! COSTCO! insert heavenly noises This is where it became very obvious that in the US, to organise a hackathon, you need a car. With different public transport options in different countries and cities, your mileage may vary. It was really lovely to meet @tmb & @Pranav in person, a sign of what was to come :D Also Costco is like heaven, the team went there 7 times throughout the event.

That was basically Wednesday, a @matthew arrived, we loaded the first round of Costco goods into Figma and went for dinner (which was really just desert). And then off to bed!

Sleep was tight on Wednesday night. I crashed the moment I entered my room and woke up at 7:00am for a 7:30am breakfast so I rushed right out of my hotel room (which was sad because I had a lovely room, I could have spent hours and hours more there).

Anyhow, early start on Thursday. We had that breakfast and then headed to Figma to plan out how we’d set up the venue. The whole of HQ would be arriving that afternoon so we had to be ready to get them all productive. @kara made this great to-do list:

When everyone arrived, we got to work! Managing a big team (we had over 20 staff there at the time) is really tough, @kara really helped by making that big to-do list as it gave the team direction. One thing that was tough was that everyone had questions so I bounced around trying to help everyone else, which made me do all work once most people had left. We wrapped up at Figma at around midnight and were kind of set for the big day(s) ahead.

Side-note: at some point on Thursday we decided we’d close the sleeping floor to mean that it was slightly more crowded through the day on the fifth floor. This was one of the best choice we made over the weekend, it really gave the hackathon an amazing atmosphere and vibe!

Hour-by-hour Event Breakdown

Friday 6AM: I woke up at around 6:30AM. Packed my bag, had a big shower (at least for me, was around 5min) and got all set for check out. Nerves were flowing but I felt like everything was under control.

Friday 7AM: Checked out and then lugged my massive backpack and my small backpack (each 13kg and 5kg respectively) on my back down Market St. to Figma. That really got me awake! Said hi to a couple of folks already there and got tinkering on the venue. Still feeling like everything was under control.

Friday 8AM: Met with @Holly at exactly 8, that was really wonderful! Holly had it all under control (with @charlie zoom-ing in with support) and she was also decorating up the check-in desk which made me smile. Then I ran over the street to get coffee with a big group. That was nice and reassuring, relatively relaxed at this point.

Friday 9AM to 1PM: This slot is all a bit of a blur, I just remember do random little things around the office and working on random little tasks. It was chugging along pretty nicely!

Friday 1PM: went to go grab lunch and then ate it (quickly) with attendees at Yerba Beuna. Here it hit me that this was actually happening, people are coming! Wow! I had a Sushirrito:

Friday 2PM: At this moment, I kind of realised I’d lost track of time slightly and there was a fair bit of work that needed doing… shoot. Got back to Figma and got to work, still felt relatively in control.

Friday 4/5PM: Around this time we filmed the infamous Hack Air video and did a run through the opening ceremony. At this point it felt like everything was falling apart… lets just say the run through did not go well at all. So we scrapped it and started again. You can see how the notes I was using changed in planning/opening.md.

Friday 6PM: People are coming in! I’m stressed as heck, but I’m getting a chance to meet new people which is bringing a smile to face. The opening ceremony is being rebuilt, it’s in a reasonable place I’ve just got to muster up the energy to deliver it.

Friday 7PM: The energy at the opening ceremony was electric, I was running off it as I delivered my lines (I was petrified and nervous). When I turned to @Ishan, however… his face was not full of confidence but despite the crash and the burn of prompter (all Kahoot’s fault, stupid shit is PG13), he did an amazing job at achieving all the goals of the choose your own theme without the software. Somehow the opening ceremony was “great” according to many people… so I’ll take it… embrace the JANK!

Friday 8PM: At this point everyone had had dinner, I thought I’d take a breather… but wait no! We have workshops! Umm… why do no one know about these, SHOUT! This time was quite frantic and probably a sign that would could have communicated the workshops much better and clearer.

Friday 9PM: Crikey! Workshops are so popular, we’re running out of space! I’m feeling so happy at this moment, well done @Ishan & @bash. Surprisingly relaxed at this time, enjoyed talking to Hack Clubbers & listening in on workshops. That was until I realised there was a second wave of workshops… which generated mild stress but not too much.

Friday 10PM: At this point things are solid, I’m kind of calm and workshops are running nicely. Everything swimmming smoothly but there is a shark on the horizon, the talent show!

Friday 11PM: So… what in the world were these talent show acts… that was wild to look back on! But it worked, people smiled and enjoyed it :D All I was thinking was “please for the love of god don’t break anything”, synchronized swimming could have gone very wrong…. for the projector. Nothing was broken, yay. Also we have some sort of CTF* coming up?

Saturday 12AM: The CTF crashes. Shit. At this point I wasn’t entirely sure what to do and what was going on, so I just start screaming about THE ORGANISATION. There seem to be some puzzles for people to do so let’s just get them doing those. These thirty minutes are such a blur, all I remember is shouting and being confused… but somehow we won? ;) My improvisation skills I picked up from doing Drama in school finally helped me with something.

Saturday 1AM: So at this point people were sleepy and they headed up to the sleeping rooms, which seemed to go relatively smoothly. I was not sleepy, however. The past couple hours had given me a ton of energy (with a bit of help caffeine). So let’s get coding! Technically, at this point I was meant to be sleeping but let’s not talk about that.

Saturday 2AM: Well, at this time people were coding and just kind of doing their own thing. I guess there wasn’t too much for me to do, I was too tired to work but too energetic to sleep. So, I did some “motivating” and got more of a chance to talk to Hack Clubbers (which was honestly the best part of Assemble).

Saturday 3AM to 5AM: So I’m not quite sure what happened in these hours. At some point here I fall asleep on a couch whilst renaming bank transactions… sleep? I’m still not quite sure what my whole sleeping strategy was, I guess it didn’t exist. My only one was, feeling tired? Gulp a can of Coke. I’m a bit of a Coke addict.

Saturday 6AM: So at 6AM… I convinced myself that we need more breakfast food! I never really followed up on this, but I feel like we could have done with more but it seemed to end up alright. We had Trader Joe’s as a backup if we needed. Anyways, wake up! Let’s get coding! Let’s get coding! This is when shouting Sam really starting to become natural and I could do an hour of shouting on one can of Coke. Things seem to be going pretty well at this point.

Saturday 7AM: This hour was all kind of chaotic shouting, phrases I remember are: “eat breakfast!”, “wake up!”, insert something totally not motivational that was meant to be and to one organiser: “why are people so SLEEPY?!”. I think my brain had full and truly vanished at this point.

Saturday 8AM: So everyone seemed to be less sleepy but still sleepy, I was thinking we gotta get everyone hyped up. I was doing all this shouting until I realised… we have workshops in one hour. Poor @Ishan then got woken up by me a couple of minutes (well, more like 30 minutes) before his sleep block ended… sorry about that but with a bit of frantic work we got workshops going.

Saturday 9AM: I got to relax a little bit here, it was nice to see everything kind of flowing and workshops going smoothly. We had lightning talks on the horizon but that was kind of sorted. Around here a group also headed out to The Castro which was really special to hear about and I’m really glad they all got the chance to do that :D (The Castro is amazing, got to visit twice after Assemble. I would recommend Orphan Andy’s.)

Saturday 10AM: LIGHTNING talks time! These were so sick, the only issues was that we kind of needed to speed things up! That’s on our end, sorry. We managed to work it out however thanks to the great work of @Ishan. Hack yeah! Zoom-ing in Charlie was something I was super glad we could do, I was bummed that he couldn’t end up making it. And then we got everyone into workshops on time! This morning block’s schedule was very tight, something I wouldn’t do again.

Saturday 11AM: At this point I kind of had the feeling that everyone’s losing energy…. oh no… I wasn’t! It was something big, just in the back of my mind. Workshops were going alright, I’m not super sure, maybe I was the one losing energy? Am I in denial? The Scavenger Hunt was coming up, and to be honest I had zero clue what was happening, the hunt was all @Dev’s department.

Saturday 12PM: Ok so the first 20 minutes of the Scavenger Hunt were utter chaos. But then OMG everyone is out the door, time to relax!! But no! I had to clean everything up and then get a ton of papers printed, I was slightly stressed at this time but also weirdly calm about everything.

Saturday 1PM: Here I just did the things I thought about doing at 12PM. I also tried to climb into a dinosaur costume… unsuccessfully. Most relaxed hour of the hackathon for me, I guess the chaos was all outside.

Saturday 2PM: As everyone was coming back into the venue, I was thinking wow, this mood is electric! The Scavenger Hunt really brought the hackathon back alive and was something I really appreciated having. It was as if the hackathon has restarted completely, I loved it. Kudos to @Dev. Also I had an amazing burrito from El Farolito. 10/10, would recommend.

Saturday 3PM: At this moment, I was really loving the new energy. This block is all a bit of a blur but I just remember great vibes, cool people visiting, productive time, workshops going smoothly and having a great time.

Saturday 6PM: I was personally starting to get hungry… I want food! Let’s get everyone downstairs to get Chipotle! And wow, these boxes were massive. Wow.

Saturday 7PM: The Chipotle catering was fun, though we didn’t get enough though! The boxes were deceiving in size (we ordered $500 in emergency pizza so its all good). That was still a hackload of fun! Smiles all round, attendees really enjoyed it.

Saturday 8PM: At this time the vibes were still all good. I was focused on helping Lux get setup for the disco but really enjoying myself!

Saturday 9PM: Wow, throughout the disco I was just amazed at how cool the synth & Lux using it :D My only regret is we hadn’t worked about a better AV setup as it was pretty jank! Oh and wait… what in the world was I doing in a dino costume? Well… that was some fun chaos! I really enjoyed it.

Saturday 10PM & 11PM: Alrighty so things were calming down around now, but wow! The vibes were really good at this time and people seem to be doing quite well as well. I especially loved when Hack Clubbers started organising their own fun side activities, that was amazing.

Saturday 12AM: There are two types of people at this time: those falling asleep and those picking up fun energy. I’m picking up fun energy. What both types of people need is ICE CREAM! That was really fun, the highlight of the hackathon for me!

Sunday 1AM: Ok…. hold up…. so things at this time were starting to get out of hand…. but this is super fun! Sunday morning was like a rollercoaster

Sunday 2AM - 4AM: The rollercoaster has kind of slowed… I was just dealing with any resulting fires… but still fun! This is all somehow still working! How?!

Sunday 5AM: Here, at this time, I sleep for about half an hour… somewhere and somehow? I don’t remember where I slept.

Sunday 6AM: Good morning! Oh shoot, at this point I was really tired…. I had no energy left. And ugh… everyone is kind of missing… I think everyone else crashed and fell asleep like me. Anyhow, it was now time to work out breakfast.

Sunday 7AM: The magic coke I drank worked from me… WOW… I’ve got so much energy! How? Time to get shouting! GOOD MORNING!!! WAKE UP!!! GOOD MORNING!!! MILKSHAKES!!! The chaotic energy went from powering 75% of me to 99% of me at this point.

A bit of context before we dive into the next section of pure chaos. Our plan to end the hackathon was to have an hour of “project pitches” (come on up and for thirty seconds, without any technology, tell us why your project is useless) at 9AM, followed by an hour of “science fair demos” with attendees judging each others projects on Scrapbook (read more here) and then wrap up with a thirty-minute closing to give out prizes and say goodbye.

Sunday 8AM: Woah Woah, hold up!! The chaotic energy was flowing at the moment, but the Scrapbook DB crashed! Hack. Hack. Oh dear what had I done, had I messed something up here? Oh shiver me timbers, I have :D insert photos of me with two thumbs up and an awkward smile.

Sunday 9AM: So…. at this point, Scrapbook was kind of sorted??? All I had to do was to filibuster for an hour to get Ian all the time he needed to get these things printed! So embrace my inner Senator and filibuster I did! Somehow people enjoyed it? I learnt that… @zrl doesn’t want to become reproductive? This time block is all a bit of a blur… I was clearly very tired. However, we kept to the schedule perfectly! Nice one you all.

Sunday 10AM: Ok. We’re off. NOOO!! Scrapbook is down! Patch??? Patched????? 16 million DB requests. WHY. Yeah… I know why, my bad. We got something working. The vibe was apparently amazing at this time, I spent the whole time trapped to my computer hotfixing Scrapbook.

Sunday 11AM: Wow, that surprisingly went quite well… people enjoyed it without a perfect Scrapbook. Hmmm, sadly we had to kill it to make it on time :((( PRIZES! OMG we actually had so many?? So I randomly decided to give everyone a prize, everyone! We took a team photo and was just feeling great! Yay :DDD we did it!!

Sunday 12PM: Why does everyone have to go??? Why??? Bye :(, it was so lovely getting one-on-one time with Hack Clubbers as they left the venue and to give them Ella’s keychains.

Sunday 1PM: I felt dead. I was so tired and when all the Hack Clubbers left, I lost my primary source of energy but deep down whilst I was struggling to find the words I was so happy and proud of the team :D

Post-Event

Things are still processing in my head, so this reflection is still an initial thought dump. I’m so proud of us all, so overwhelmed with everything that just happened and incredibly sleep deprived. Every now and again I just take step back and think what the heck just happened? All the screaming, the smiles and the banter, it happened.

I think what went well is the magical energy that the event had. It never felt like there was nothing to do, I’ve organised and been to hackathon when there’s nothing to do for extended periods time… I certainly didn’t get a chance to take a seat at Assemble so it seems like there was always something to do. Even during the sleeping hours! @msw had an interesting point, it had the hacking time of a 24 hour hackathon and then a ton of fun activities to take us to 42 hours which I really loved about it!

Another thing that was so wonderful was how Hack Clubbers really made the event their own. Especially on Saturday night where we had people running their own movie nights, Jackbox games and chair races to name a few things. At the opening ceremony I said “really you all will be the ones who make this event magical. be kind, be helpful. let’s make this the most incredibly weekend that’s happened this year”. That vision came to life, thanks to all the Hack Clubbers.

It was also really special to see the sort of projects Hack Clubbers built at Assemble. We talked a lot about how we wanted to encourage crazy and non-sensical projects, we certainly didn’t want any business pitches! Instead we had people pitching how useless their projects were. Perfection. So many things tied into putting all the projects on this path, from the “prompter” to judging even to how we spoke about building. This was one of the biggest things we wanted to achieve and we did it.

You may have heard about the Run of Show in previous editions of Assembling Assemble…. well, it went right out the window! I’m not quite sure what happened to it but all the intricate planning kind of got replaced with “go with the flow”. This worked 90% of the time but then there were times when we didn’t have the staff we needed… which was far from ideal. I’m going dive deeper into this at a later date in a more focused retrospective but it’s certainly on my mind and I think its a communication issue coming from me.

Other things didn’t go quite to plan… however… you may have noticed that every single piece of custom infrastructure (except for check-in, nice one Charlie) broke during the event. You all saw Prompter fail moments before the opening ceremony began, Scrapbook become overloaded with database requests as judging began and the CTF system crash on the stroke of midnight. But something magical seemed to happen, the show went on. We improvised and made everything run. And Hack Clubbers came along for the circus, which was magical! Thanks for dealing with our madness, I hope you enjoyed it? Never again will we write custom infrastructure, never again. (I say that, I know we will… never again write it mid-event. Though all kudos to the team that made it work in the end, it was stressful as hell but the team on engineering, especially Ian, gave it 110% and it made the circus a semi-functional circus).

There’s a 110 more issues I could through, but it is starting to get late. They’re implementation details and thats for an upcoming open source retrospective (see here).

As I begin to wrap, I want to express just how grateful I am to everyone who staffed the event, volunteered on the day-of and went out of their way to help the organising team (even if just by picking up a piece of trash).

As a team, we went from ground zero on May 20th to on August 5th having 175 Hack Clubbers assembled in San Francisco. In just 77 days, we put together the entire hackathon and that’s an achievement to be proud of. All week I’ve been hearing from attendees in #assemble about their time at Assemble and those magical experiences are all thanks to the Assemble team who put days and days into this event. Late nights and early mornings all featured, sometimes in unison. I speak a lot about how its the magic of the event that matters, the Assemble team make that magic.

And to all the hackers who attended, I am immensely grateful. The idea that 175 of you all would take your entire weekend to attend Assemble is humbling. As I’ve mentioned before, you all brought the event alive and made it your own. I tried my best to get around to meeting you all, it was so wonderful to hear each every one of your stories and to learn all about you. Watching many of you go from having no clue on Friday to a working* project on Sunday was really special for me.

The last week has been a special week for me, the best of my life I’d say. Thank you everyone for everything, you all are the best.