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over 9 years ago

TeamChild Hackathon Updates and Demo Day!

Greetings Hackers,

It's been one month since the TeamChild Hackathon and we're just as excited as you are to continue working to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline. We saw a great display of innovative youth justice technologies at our event and I'd like to share a few details with you in what's coming next:

  1. The #TCHack team is finalizing the demo day date and time  in the next week and want to make sure that all of our winning teams and participants can make the webinar.
  2. Our sponsors and community partners have generously offered a free 101 course at Code Fellows To redeem use the code "TEAMCHILD" with any of the Code 101 courses to get a 100% discount off the ticket price.

Teamwork Tips

I've included a few tips and tricks that will help your team get off to a great start (if you haven't already) working on your products for Demo Day:

  1. If you haven't already, dedicate a team leader and establish roles in your product development. When your team is small, it's easy to think that everyone knows everything... this is true until someone misses a meeting or tunes out in the middle of one! Instead, designate team members to be in charge of information/requirements/goals/etc. that are needed in your product. In the business world, this is called "Governance" and it does wonders for team collaboration and communication!
  2. Another business tool that could be useful is the Agile methodology. From KanBan to Scrum, these ideas split the workload into easy-to-digest work periods with releases of a minimum viable product after a short length of time (usually two weeks). If you didn't yet know some of the words in that last sentence, look them up! These methodologies and the business tools built around them (e.g. Trello, Basecamp, Asana) will save you hours of organizational time and let you get to work as efficiently as possible!
  3. Use our Slack Channel to cross-pollinate with other hackathon teams and participants. Our community is always growing and we are advertising the channel's existence to others in the youth justice community. We want to create a single source for innovators for all those interested... So get on Slack, tell your friends and start sharing your work!
  4. Slack not public enough for you? Get feedback from people around the world by sharing your progress on a blog, social network or via your local news affiliate. It's amazing what can happen when others hear about what you're doing! Building a following is as important and building a product. What you want is champions of your idea/product/team so that you can stand strong when the times get tough. Plus, you never know what talent is lurking in the shadows, just waiting for an opportunity to join a team like yours!

Questions?

We're here to help. If you have any questions about the hackathon, post on the discussion forum or email support@devpost.com and we'll respond as soon as we can.