I signed up for my first hackathon last month. It was a special event hosted by Nashville Software School (NSS) for students and alumni only. It happens just once a year, so I jumped at the opportunity.

What is a hackathon, you ask? Dictionary.com defines a hackathon as:

“an event, typically lasting several days, in which a large number of people meet to engage in collaborative computer programming.”

I had never been to a hackathon before, but I always imagined they looked like this–

In reality, hackathons look more like this:

The NSS hackathon was an all-weekend event. Since halloween was right around the corner, the hackathon was dubbed “Hack-O-Ween”. There was a kick-off party with food, games, and a costume contest. The hackathon had a few different projects of varying difficulty levels you could choose from…