Hector wins blockchain hackathon and attributes success to Sabio Coding Bootcamp
How would you like to win a whole Bitcoin? Sounds great right? What if you could based on your coding skills alone? That’s exactly what happened to Sabio alumni Hector B. and his three teammates, now champions of the Consensus 2018 Blockchain Hackathon.
Held in New York City, Consensus 2018 is a weekend of hacking, hustling, and deep-diving into the blockchain industry’s most cutting-edge developer tools. “The energy and everything going on around there was so exciting,” Hector eagerly remembered, “Now is the time for Blockchain, and you could really feel it.”
With the blockchain buzz in the air, Hector and his fellow contestants only found out about their challenge an hour before the hackathon started, “We had to create a solution for existing company GrowNYC, that was trying to find a way to use blockchain to add to its protocol for food, produce, acquisition and distribution, basically what people are getting from the farm and then tracking it. So we were able to clear the solutions that added to their infrastructure which created different blocks on the chain, added-metadata for a lot of the logistical route of receiving produce from the farmers all the way down their supply chain. This allows them to track things like temperature per product, if there was any damaged crates. It was about creating a simple and easy solution. At the end, once you go all the way down the supply chain, you could know that the produce was actually coming from a locally grown farm.”
Also a winner of the south by southwest 2018 hackathon, Hector approached the hackathon form a very specific light, “I thought, you know, if I was in their position, I would want to have the most simple system that eliminates redundancies without losing money everywhere. The company was doing a lot of manual reporting, and working with farmers who are not the most technically savvy people, so you need to take a holistic approach. That’s why we incorporated SMS text messaging. Because that’s something that whether you have a sophisticated smartphone or not, you can answer ‘Yes’ or a simple ‘1–2–3.’
The winning process however was no cakewalk, “It was really crazy, there were 35 teams that competed. The amount of talent in the room was pretty amazing. We had a two minute pitch that we had to give to these judges, and some of them were purposefully not even versed in blockchain, but we did it and we won.”
But Hector wasn’t always king of code, originally from Downey, CA, he used to be an acquisition specialist for a car dealership. “It was pretty boring, and I was doing that for a better part of 10 years. Then my brother developed an application for iOs and encouraged me to start coding. So knowing absolutely nothing about it, I went online and started researching.”
“It was very challenging to get motivated and stay motivated,” Hector remembered, ”You can only do so much on your own. Then my sister in law who attended Sabio and loved it recommended it to me. I loved the idea of actually going through an immersive program which took you through the whole process rather then just playing with the idea.”
Although, wanting to keep all his ducks in a row, Hector checked out a handful of other schools as well, but they just didn’t cut it, “I loved everything that Gregorio (Sabio’s Co-Founder and CTO,) had to say. After checking out Hack Reactor specifically, I was just sold on Sabio’s culture and how seriously Gregorio seemed to take our progress and development. I still can’t believe it. He’s like a caring drill sergeant, just like we’re in a bootcamp. But what I realized afterwards is that his thing is essentially, ‘I’m going to give you everything I’ve got, because once cohort is done, now I have to give that to everybody else. It’s really amazing when you think about it.’
Like many of us, Hector had a personal life and lifestyle that he needed to maintain while attending Sabio Coding Bootcamp, but managed to juggle it all out, “I have a daughter, so I had to balance being available to her, and I’m super athletic so every single day I would work out an hour beforehand. It was this rigid structure that I’m so thankful Sabio helped me maintain, I would train every day from 7–8, shower up real quick, and then run from Downey to culver City, and then I would leave Sabio at like 9:30 or 10PM. It was an interesting time, but it fit in my learning structure, you know how they say ‘consistency beats intensity every time.’”
Hector attributes much of his success to the Sabio instructors, “Gregorio was like my Obi Wan Kenobi, always pushing me, he taught me discipline while I was learning a whole new skill set. Even now if I run into a problem, he’s always there for me to help me find the answer to a problem. It was an invaluable opportunity going through Sabio and being able to bring that culture into my work ethic.”
Hector continued, “The system that Sabio has put together is just completely designed, nothing is put there casually, every step of it is there for a reason. Just by being in that space with those instructors and your cohort mates, you’re evolving, you’re getting stronger, you solidify neurons in your brain that are later going to give you the foundation that allows you to become a better developer. It’s not so much that you’re going to be ‘this sort of developer,’ when you come out, it’s more like, now you’re ready for your real journey to begin, whether it’s going to a startup or an enterprise company or starting your own thing.”
Even while in the hackathon, Hector felt the confidence that Sabio gave him, “They really allow you to realize that you can solve anything. That’s the thing with Sabio, I was shown something, and they let me figure it out on my own, and then I when I was stuck, they helped me get more unstuck. That attitude has stayed with me.”
For those interested in attending Sabio and possibly following in Hectors footsteps towards that winning prize, he advised, “Just trust the system. Allow the formation process to actually happen. Lean into it, because your best result is going to happen when you completely embrace the Sabio way.”
“I’m really grateful for going to Sabio because it gave me a foundation to continue to grow while still developing at my own tempo. I went through it, learned, grew, and now I’m in Blockchain. But it’s only possible because of my Sabio training.”
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Written by Sassy Mohen
