TL;DR
- The Start - A little bit about how I got involved
- The Dive
- Supadraw - The first hackathon project
- Implementation of Supadraw
- A little secret
- Adrew changed his name to Supadrew
The Start:
June 2023, I came back to twitter to have a look around what's happening with literally 0 followers in my account. Where was I? And what was I doing? Well, I was just roaming on different social media platforms and trying to build a presence. In addition to that, I am an engineering student studying Textile Engineering (yes, you heard that right).
I spent like a week on twitter and totally fell in love with the community. Everyone's trying to build their own brand, making quality content and what not! This is when I stumbled upon the official Supabase account by a meme they shared. Seriously? A meme from their official account? I had to rethink twice and concluded that these are the type of people I want to connect with. Smart at what they do with a good blend of humour. I had to click on the "follow" button.
On August 2023, I got to know that Supabase has Launch Weeks. It's basically a week where they share all the new features they've worked on. And to accelerate the engagement, they host a Launch Week Hackathon. They prepare special branded swag kit for the winners. And what's more luring than wearing a Supabase iconed hoodie and flexing with your friends?
Ok, enough talk, let's get back to business.
The Dive:
Supadraw - The first hackathon project
Let's talk about the first hackathon project Supadraw. You can quickly check it out here. It's an application to draw stuffs and share with other people. That's it. A few days before the hackathon, I published a code on sololearn where I tried to make a simple drawing application. Then I thought, why not I add a few more features to the existing application and submit as an entry?
Well, that's a pretty good idea but the drawing pad I had there wasn't looking satisfactory at all. So the first problem I faced was to make the drawing pad again. I started looking for some drawing pad from the community and luckily found one github repo. I instantly grabbed it and made my own version. Hence, I solve my first problem.
One crucial to keep in mind during a hackathon is that you have very limited time. You barely have time to make everything from scratch. Just look for things that people already have made for you to use. Therefore to accelerate the development process I used the following technologies:
- UI - shadcn-ui (This single-handedly helped elevate the whole design of the application)
- Authentication: Supabase auth
- Next.js 13 (app router)
It's time for a secret. I followed a different path than most of my competitors. While the traditional way is to hide your idea while building, I chose to build in public. I posted every single day about Supadraw. And guess what? I got the CTO of Supabase retweet my tweet and the impressions sky-rocketed. One of the developers from Supabase changed his name to "Andrew Supadrew" after drawing a Supabase icon on my application! I mean, WHAT?
I think building in public was a great idea (for me) and it definitely had great impact on the judges while choosing the winners.
And that's it for today. The second part will be about Wordbuzz - the game!
I'd really appreciate your remarks on this post. Thank you for reading this far :)
Arb