>> Welcome to Microsoft Unboxed.
[MUSIC]
I'm one of your hosts Sonia Dara,
and I'm joined by my colleague and friend Colleen O'Brien.
>> Hello world.
>> Today, we have a very special episode of Microsoft Unboxed,
and today's theme is: Hacking 101.
>> But before we jump in, remember to subscribe.
Just hit that red button right below the video,
and every Thursday at 9:00 AM Pacific,
you'll be notified when we release a new video.
>> So this is a very special episode where
John Gottfried will be joining us on the show,
who's an expert on all things hacking and hackathons.
>> He's a hacking aficionado.
>> Yeah. This is to help us kick off
our celebration for next week's Microsoft Hackathon,
which is the world's largest private hackathon
and it's hosted by The Garage,
which is an organization we have here on campus.
>> This year is the sixth annual Microsoft Hackathon,
and it's bound to be one of our biggest.
Last year's hackathon brought together 23,500 employees.
>> And interns.
>> They worked on over 5,800 projects.
>> Yeah. People from across how many countries? Seventy-five.
>> Seventy-five countries.
>> Yeah.
>> Well done Microsoft Hackathon.
>> Pretty awesome. So the reason why
we have this hackathon and why Satya Nadella,
our CEO had introduced this six years back,
was to really help us evolve our culture and
allow people to step away from their desk jobs and to
really focus on some other projects and maybe
some ideas people have been thinking
about that can really help make a difference.
So all of it really stems back to
our five cultural pillars that Microsoft has.
So one, is growth mindset.
Two, how to be customer obsessed.
Three, all things diverse and inclusive.
Four, how to promote One Microsoft,
so pulling in a lot of different parts of the company together.
Five, all about making a difference.
>> So this year there are 16 challenges at the hackathon.
Each one is sponsored by an executive here at the company,
and comes fully loaded on our internal hackathon website
with resources and guidance about how to think about your hack.
>> Give me a few examples, or your favorites.
>> A few of my favorites are, hack for ethics.
>> I like that.
>> Yeah. We need to take a step back and make sure that
AI continues to be for good in our products,
and how it's manifesting in the world.
>> Yeah.
>> Another one of the challenges that I'm really
excited about is hack for Linkedin.
>> That's a good one.
>> Linkedin is of course part of the Microsoft family,
so they are included in this hackathon as well.
Then we have a hack for sustainability.
>> All good topic.
>> All great topics.
>>Nice.
>> So those are a lot of different challenges.
I'm getting really excited reading through this list.
How are you feeling about this?
>> Good. I mean, I actually have
never participated in the hackathon,
but I've been every year to take a look at all the projects.
There is one I remember I even got to try
it out is they had a medical bed,
and by just using your vision,
you're able to dictate where the orientation of the bed would go.
>> Very cool.
>> Yeah. So it sounds like we're both pretty
excited for the hackathon next week.
But I think we should probably get some tips
and tricks first from John.
So let's jump to the interview.
John, thank you so much for joining us today on the show.
We're very excited to have you in the studio.
If you don't mind telling our audience
a little bit more about yourself,
and maybe a little bit about your friend.
>> Yeah. I know I'm excited to be here.
I'm the co-founder of Major League Hacking,
which is the global community for student developers.
So every day, I get to work with
really smart young people building tomorrow's technology,
and Manny here is one of
the projects that got built at one of our events,
and sits in our office as a hack on exhibit.
>> So can you tell a little bit more about
what programs they have or how the Hack League works?
>> Yes. So we work with about a 125,000 students a year,
so it's a lot of people.
There's only about 40,000 CS grads in the US,
so it's pretty global organization.
We do everything from hackathons to
technical workshops where you can learn a specific skill,
as well as demo days and community building events for people,
basically everywhere in the world.
We've had events on every continent
at this point, including Antarctica.
>> What? That's awesome.
>> John, can you tell us what a hackathon is?
>> Yeah. A hackathon is
a weekend long invention marathon where people come together,
come up with a crazy idea,
and then build a working version of it
in a really short period of time,
and then they get to show it off to their friends.
It's a really great experience for us.
Students are traveling from all over to be part of this.
So you have hundreds or even thousands of
people all showing up to the same building,
and there's a lot of energy.
Maybe there's a friend you haven't seen in awhile,
maybe there is a company that you're a big fan
of that you've never interacted with in person before,
and all of the hackathons kick off with
an opening ceremony that tries to keep that momentum going.
>> So what happens after a hackathon ends?
Do people keep working on a project together?
Have they made friends afterwards?
>> I hope you've made friends.
That's definitely part of the point of the events.
>> Perhaps, you've made enemies.
>> I hope you have not made enemies,
that's a terrible hackathon.
Typically, we see people
leaving the hackathon with a new skill set,
maybe some new connections.
One of the cool things about it is you
don't have to continue working on your project.
It de-risks it a lot when you don't have to
think about the future implications of what you're building.
Occasionally, people do turn
their hack projects into products or startups,
but I kind of compare it to a marathon
where everyone's going at their own pace.
Most people are there just to extend their skills a little bit,
do something they didn't think they were capable of,
and that's what they get out of it, that's it.
>> What are some great hacks that you've
seen either something you've been part of,
or just got a demo from someone else?
>> One of my favorites is this kid Ben. He comes up to me.
He's like, "Hey, I'm going to build something crazy this
weekend," and then he disappears for 24 hours.
I get to the end, and I go up to him and
he's just at like an empty folding table.
I was like, "What happened?" I'm like,
"Did it not work out?"
He was like, "No. Follow me."
So we go out to the parking lot,
and he opens the door to this car.
I get in the backseat, and it's like he starts driving around.
I noticed that the steering wheel had
all these 3D printed gears duct-taped to it,
and that the car was steering itself.
It was absolutely terrifying.
I got out as quickly as I could.
>> All of that happened in one weekend?
>> He literally built that in two days.
>> Well done with that demo Ben.
>> Good job Ben.
>> Yeah. Very impressive. I could not do that.
>> Our hackathon here at Microsoft is next week.
What tips do you have for us to be amazing hackers?
>> Give us all of the tips.
>> Work backwards.
So often what I'll do is I'll think about what's
the minimum buyable demo to prove my point,
and then see what goes into that.
You need to show off a specific feature or
functionality that is a proof of concept for your overall idea,
and that's what gets people excited about it.
>> Okay. So I have to ask now about Manny.
>> Yeah. Manny is my nickname for it,
it's actually called Alert,
and it was built by a handful of
UDub students to increase safety on campus.
Basically how it works is,
this is a motion sensor,
and there's a light on the front that will turn on,
either there's a nearby report,
or if someone's behind you.
If you feel unsafe at any time,
you can press this little button and it will send an alarm,
which is kind of crazy, and the alarm actually would
report back to the app and call your friend.
They ended up winning one of the prize categories at the events,
so they won a challenge for making your local community better.
>> That's amazing.
>> Yeah.
>> John, how can any of our viewers get involved
with the Major League Hacking community?
>> So one is to attend events.
All of our events are free for students through 10,
and they happen all over the world all year round.
So there's a lot of really cool stuff going on,
and honestly a lot of opportunity is to learn
something new and make connections to some really cool people.
You can also organize events.
So a lot of our students put on their own workshops or hackathons,
and that's honestly one of
the best ways to become a leader in the community because you're
creating those experiences that have
been so impactful on you for other people.
If you're a professional though,
you can actually go mentor events or sponsor them
if your company is hiring students, and it's
a really good opportunity to give back to that next generation.
You can go to majorleaguehacking.com
and check out our event listing for the upcoming season,
and also use some of our free resources to learn some new skills.
>> Hackathons seem like a really great way to keep
learning and practice risk on a regular basis.
>> Hackathons really are this magical little bubble.
No one's grading you,
it doesn't affect your job performance,
no one's paying you to be there,
the worst-case scenario is
that your project doesn't work at the end,
and you probably still learn something in the process.
>> I imagine that not all of
your experiences have been totally successful.
Would you mind getting a little vulnerable
here and sharing your most epic fail?
>> My first hackathon is an event called Music Hack Day.
>> Okay.
>> I really wanted to build something that generated mashups,
way more difficult than I expected,
and there was a toolkit there that only work in Python.
So I was sitting there for most of the event trying to
like understand how Python worked, and by the end,
I was able to like Rube Goldberg together
a PHP website and a Python script that generated mashups,
and I'd never shown off a hack project before.
I had to go up on stage and show
off this terrible music I had created.
All of these people came up to me after the demos and we're like,
"I see what you were going for,
I like the idea a lot.
What are you going to do next?"
That was the thing that really got
me to continue going to those hackathons,
was like this community of people that came up and said,
"Hey, I like your idea."
That was it. It didn't really work,
but they were into it and that was encouraging.
I think a lot of people share that experience.
>> John, thank you so much for joining us today.
It was awesome having you in the studio.
I learned a lot around hackathons and how to be a better hacker.
I'm looking forward to the hackathon next week,
and I believe we'll be seeing you there, right?
>> Yeah.
>> Totally going to be on our team, right?
>> Definitely going to be on your team,
but I cannot wait to see what everyone builds.
>> Okay. So John, we're going to transition to
our next segment which is called Outside the Box.
We have questions submitted from the audience.
We have 30 seconds to answer.
We haven't seen the questions,
you haven't seen the questions. Are you ready?
>> Yeah. With my whole life.
>> Can we please get 30 seconds on a clock.
This is a good one. What's your most embarrassing moment?
>> I would say that one of
my most embarrassing moments was doing Karaoke in San Francisco,
and me and my
co-founder Swift we're singing Hit Me Baby One More Time,
great song, and they booed us off stage.
>> No.
>> True story.
>> I thought you were going to say that you split your pants,
but getting booed is worst.
>> Getting booed off stage is way worse.
>> Do you want to ask Colleen a question now?
>> Sure. I'd love to ask you a question. Man, I like that smile.
>> [inaudible].
>> What Hogwarts House are you in and why?
>> I never did the Harry Potter thing.
I think I'm a Hufflepuff.
>> Yeah. You're a Hufflepuff.
>> Okay. I could see that.
>> Sonia, what's your favorite dish to make for yourself?
>> Healthy dish or not healthy dish?
>> Give us one of each.
>> Unhealthy isn't even something I'd cook,
it's just a cheese platter.
Healthiest is what I made last night
which is usually like salmon and a salad.
But if I'm missing home,
that's a third qualifier,
is I make an Indian dish that my mom makes.
So either rasam rice or kheem.
>> So delicious.
>> So my home is out there.
If anyone has any questions for the box,
please make sure to submit them to
the e-mail address you see here,
or you can comment on the video below.
>> As always, please remember to subscribe,
hit that red button right over there,
and you will get notified about a
new episode every Thursday at 9:00 AM Pacific.
>> We'll see you next week at the Microsoft Hackathon.
>> Keep hacking.
>> Yeah. He thumbs up.
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