Microsoft Ventures Hackday 2014 Aftermath

Its 4:42 AM in the morning, and I am at day one of Microsoft Ventures Hackday 2014 in Bangalore, India. And I am writing a follow up post for Microsoft Ventures Hackday 2014.

So today I left my Office around 4:20PM, rushing to the bus stop to catch a bus so that I can reach Microsoft's office on time. But I forgot that this is Bangalore and after 4:30 traffic becomes a big issue. After nervously waiting for 10-15mins I climbed onto a bus going towards Lavelle Road. Thank god the bus was almost empty and air-conditioned, after carrying my laptop for around a kilometer the last thing I would have wanted was a crowded non-air conditioned bus. I have a habit of checking the path via Google Maps to check whether the bus is taking the shortest route or not. But unfortunately the bus driver took the bus from a longer and much busier route. It took almost an hour and 20 minutes to cover 20KM. Finally the bus dropped me off near to Lavelle Road. I had Google maps opened in my mobile with the coordinates pushed in, so I immediately paced towards the Microsoft office. It was nearby I reached their at 5:55. As I entered Microsoft building, the guards gave me a Microsoft Visitor Badge. The badge allowed me to go to the conference room named Vigyan on ground floor. Then I was given a Wifi password (for internet access on my laptop) and a Microsoft Ventures T-shirt. At sharp 6 o clock we were all called inside the conference room. Inside all the startup founders started giving a little intro about their API's. Soon after we were told to start working on our ideas. Around 8:30 we had Pizza and Coke for dinner. After that for the whole night there was Coffee, chips, Vada Pav's and Energy drinks. Overall it was fun working through the night.

As expected I was struggling a lot as my DB knowledge wasn't of much use. But I managed through without giving much headaches to teammates. Nevertheless a rewarding day, learned about quite a few API's from Frrole, Thinknest, Metaome, SupportBee, Docspad.

The next day as I was checking through the Facebook page of Microsoft Ventures, I found the following images of the event:

By the way that's me in the center of the below image trying to find a charging point for my laptop (Tall guy in black jeans, looking down). It feels nice to be on their Facebook page!

And here's a copy of the final mail that came today from Microsoft Ventures:

Hey All - Hope you had a blast with us! Thank you all for attending the hackday!

It was incredible to see your energy and passion; mashing up some pretty cool new ideas and prototypes, powering through the night, and working at it for 24hrs straight!

Our startups - ThinkNest, Profoundis, SupportBee, Frrole, Bookpad and Metaome - were very happy to see such creative and deep usage of their APIs. They'll be contacting a few of you directly to take you out to the promised lunch or dinner :)

Please do tweet/facebook/blog about your projects & experience with us #MVHackDay

If there were any slips or mess-ups do let us know and we'll do a better job next time.

Have fun and keep hacking!

Prasanna.

Microsoft Ventures Bangalore