LightHack – Version 1

This past weekend, we hosted our very first hackathon, called LightHack. Up early for a 9am start with a nice breakfast and some coffee. Quickly, the office filled up and we had over 20 people chatting / getting ready to start hacking away. We matched entrepreneurs with developers and they were off.  There were 4 teams, each building a different app. Throughout the day, I got a chance to see how people used Lightning and whether they encountered any issues. Food was served and people were having a great time. Many like myself were tired, which made development interesting.

We ended development early, had some drinks and dinner before presenting the various apps that were built.  All of which looked great and we were proud to see how much was accomplished in a few hours.  The hackathon progressed into a social event for Nathon and Scott’s birthday.

The event was great! While the event was a success in many ways, there was also a lot to learn.  Anyone hosting a hackathon can tell you that the first one won’t be perfect and you will learn as you do more. We are still debriefing to understand how we can make the future hackathons better. But if you have been to hackathons or have hosted some, I’d love to hear your feedback.  We want Lightning to be the tool developers go to when they want to build apps.

Toronto Developers – Join us for our hackathon for a chance to win $2k in prizes

Calling out my local friends to join us this Saturday, November 2nd, for our very first Hackathon of many in the LightHack series. As you can imagine, I am extremely excited to see the hard work we’ve put into Lightning over the past few years come to life.

If you are free Saturday, interested in building an app, learning about Lightning, free food and drinks, and a chance to win a prize – I look forward to seeing you.

For more information and to register:
http://www.lightningplatform.com/lighthack

Only the best powering Lightning

It is Sunday night, CBC is going well and no server hiccups at all, so I’d take a bit of time to post some stuff and benchmarks we’ve hit with Lightning.  Lightning is the name we are calling our new platform.  Not only does it sound better, it also works with a few other products that are coming out that support Lightning. Lightning is a name that has meaning for the goals we are looking to accomplish.

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