Best of Courier at Hackabull 2021: Speed Friender
During the weekend of March 13th, 2021, we sponsored Hackabull, a 24 hour virtual hackathon hosted by the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers at the University of South Florida. This was the first hackathon Courier has sponsored. We know that events are a great way to talk directly to developers and I am a huge advocate for the value a hackathon can bring to a company with a new developer focused product. In all my years as a developer advocate and a software engineer before that, I learned how valuable hackathons can be for gathering real time feedback and building community around your product. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, attending developer events has not been a possibility and virtual events haven't felt like the best fit. After consulting with Jonathan Gottfried of Major League Hacking (MLH), he convinced me to take another look at virtual hackathons. Jonathan gave me a short list of hackathons to consider and Hackabull was near the top. This seemed like a great choice to me because I had attended their 2018 hackathon in person and knew what to expect.
From engaging with the developer community to encouraging Courier sign ups, Hackathons have countless business benefits and opportunities. My favorite part, however, is watching the participants come up with interesting and unique ways to use Courier that we may never have thought of before. What’s great about Courier is that it is quick to implement and is immediately actionable, which the team that built Speed Friender was able to take full advantage of. Speed Friender is a Discord app that provides online speed dating for friends, and most importantly, it was built in just 24 hours.
