A couple of weeks ago I participated in a hackathon (i.e., a programming competition) with my brother. The topic of the hackathon was “Transparency and Society”, so each team had to build an application that would make something more transparent and improve society as a consequence.
Teams had the whole day to work on their projects, and by the end of the afternoon there would be a voting session, and the winning team would take a prize of $2000 and get some media exposure as well (which is what I was after, in order to promote my mobile development company).
Long story short we had by far the best app there. Our goal was to improve the quality of the 3G/4G services here in Brazil (as they are terrible) by making the data about the real speed that each mobile carrier was delivering to its customers more transparent and available to everyone.
We therefore created a mobile app (our prototype was working both on Android and iOS) that would collect some data from the user, including his carrier, connection type and city. The user would then start the test to measure the speed of his Internet connection, and once completed all the data would be sent to our central server.
On the server we process all the data and calculate the average connection speed being offered by each mobile carrier on each city of the country, and then make this information available both on the mobile app itself as well as on a dedicated website.
In other words, with this app anyone would be able to know which is the best mobile carrier, what’s the real average connection speed on any city and so on. Possibly this increased awareness we put pressure on the carriers to improve their services. Below you’ll find a short demo of the app we put on YouTube:
The technical jury selected our project among the 3 that would make a demonstration on the main stage. So far so good, and now we would need to convince the general public.
I knew that the order of presentations could affect the outcome. Usually the last one to demo is favored, cause he can see the mistakes that other presenters made and fix them, and because the last demo will stay fresher in the minds of the audience, so they are more likely to vote for it.
Instead of insisting on drawing the presentation order at random, though, I just waited to see what would happen, and sure enough my brother and I were asked to demo first, just because the organizers remembered the name of our project more easily…
Once all presentations were made it was time for the public to vote on their favorite project. Guess what, the organizers didn’t have anything planned as to how they would count the votes.
I saw trouble coming.
The master of ceremonies, who was a showman and thus more interested in making things entertaining for the public rather than fair for the competitors, started taking ideas about how they should count the votes.
Some people suggested that it should be based on the amount of noise generated by claps of the audience. Then a guy jokingly shouted that farts should be counted as well (I kid you not).
The master of ceremonies liked the idea (the fart one…), but decided to give it his own twist. He said: “Okay I like that. Let’s do the voting using our butts. If you want to cast your vote for a project you’ll need to come here and touch the stage with your butt”. (again, I kid you not).
Laughs exploded in the room, and I looked to my brother in disbelief.
I wondered for a moment if I should raise my hand and argue that we needed a more serious voting system to make things fair (and to avoid transforming the whole thing into a circus…). I didn’t do it though, probably because I was afraid to confront the organizers in front of everyone else.
Within seconds the guy declared: “Okay who wants to vote for the first project come here on stage and touch it with your butt, right now!”.
Needless to say that most people were embarrassed to walk from their seats to the stage. They would be embarrassed merely to walk up there, let alone to go there and touch the stage with their butts…
We got 18 butts, I mean votes. That’s including my brother and I, cause they said we were allowed to vote for our own projects (more on that later).
“Okay now who wants to vote for the second project?” he announced. The second project got 16 votes if I remember well.
“Finally who wants to vote for the third project?” he concluded. Around 8 people had worked on this project, and they also brought a bunch of friends along, so they were on to a good start…. By this time people were also more relaxed about walking to the stage, and in the end they got 35 votes or so.
I was pretty disappointed with the results, and so were many of the technical jurors. I politely thanked the organizers, got the second place swag, and walked away with my brother. I really thought we deserved to win, but figured things don’t always work out as expected.
Or do they?
I started thinking about it, and came to the conclusion that things work as expected if you make them. If you think you deserve something then you got to take it, cause in most situations in life people will not serve it to you on a silver plate.
Had I insisted on drawing the presentation order at random, on using a fair voting system and on prohibiting project participants and friends on voting for their own project I believe we would have won. And I should either have done that or withdraw from the competition.
Sure, there would be some confrontation involved and I would need to step out of my comfort zone, but if that is what it takes, so be it.
Luckily it was just a small programming competition, and it helped me to learn an important lesson.
Think about your career, your business, your relationships, your finances. If you want something, you got to take it. Nobody is gonna just handle it to you, whether you deserve it or not.
If the circumstances are not there, create them.
Cause if you don’t, somebody else will.
Original Post:
You Got to Take What’s Yours 
