This year's hackathon was a whole lot of different experiences for me. When the school announced the second hackathon I was excited to take part since I enjoyed the previous year’s hackathon.

I thought we would be programming in Python, the language which is being taught in the mainstream curriculum.However to our surprise, we had to learn a block based programming language to develop a mobile app. The theme of this year’s hackathon was on mobile computing. We developed Mobile apps using MIT appInventor, an online mobile application development platform( http://appinventor.mit.edu ).

Initially I wasn’t confident about developing a mobile application using appInventor. I have no experience in the development of a mobile app nor have I heard and used the MIT appInventor before. The only thing I had was the drive to learn and explore without the fear of failure.

So I began to explore appInventor’s tutorials and documentation. I also explored and learned a lot from YouTube. I have also learned from my teammates not just the technical insights but also to work in collaboration.

Hackathons are usually an intense creative exercise where a team comes up with a solution to a problem in the shortest time. I had to manage time by sacrificing my study and sleep time while working on the app. Learning to use the app Inventor took me a lot of my time. I stayed back an hour or two for almost two weeks after class in the school lab with my team. By the time I got home, I was exhausted.

Having my personal laptop was a boon to me. I could work on the app event at home at my convenience. I could experiment by adding new features to the app. Besides, I also could explore more resources.

I wished we had a fast and reliable Internet connection in the computer Lab. Slow Internet connection had hindered us from exploring the resources and prolonging the development cycle of the apps. App Inventor requires a good Internet bandwidth.

My team came up with a counseling app called Samkham. We felt mental health is an issue given our lives disrupted by COVID recently. The app could provide an alternative to people who want to avail counseling services.

We received valuable feedback from the judges while presenting our app and also from our teachers and friends who have used our app. We are working on it. Our app is just a minimum viable product. I have a dream to make Samkham available in Google Playstore one fine day.