Things I did at #HackedIO

I've spent this weekend at the O2 in London attending http://hacked.io/. It is almost certainly the largest hack event I've ever been to at 500 attendees and had the themes of "Learn, Build, Share".

Anyway, here's what I got up to:

• Hacked a project together. It's a WP8 app that makes a light show with Philips Hue bulbs based on currently playing music and use of data from Nokia Music to get the metadata to base the light show on. [LEARN, BUILD]
• Helped someone with an issue about Voice Commands. I hadn't used them myself before. [LEARN, SHARE]
• Wrote a blog post about what I learned about using (and debugging issues with) Voice Commands. [SHARE]
• Wrote a couple of NuGet packages (1, 2) to address gaps in the WP8 SDK [BUILD]
• Learnt about building screencasts with Camtasia Studio but didn't have a microphone with me so that ruled out trying to make one. [LEARN]
• Blogged about them instead [SHARE]
• Read a book, about copywriting. (This was a bit of a, semi-random, diversion at my most exhausted.) [LEARN]
• Helped with various #WPDev related queries, including unlocking dev devices. [SHARE]
• Made it through the night with no sleep, thanks to lots of sugary food, sugar and caffeine laced drinks, and lots of loud music. Mostly from the best DJ in the world!
• Submitted a pull request to the Nokia Music API client with some added functionality. [BUILD, SHARE]
• Made the code for my hack public. [SHARE]
• Had some free time (somehow!) so wrote another blog post [SHARE]
• Helped some more people with their WP8 app [SHARE]
• Wrote another random blog post. [SHARE]

Time for judging, presentations and lunch now. :D

It's been a great event!

Oh year, there were some WiFi issues early on but they were addressed by the excellent organising team. Much love and respect to them for an amazing job when everyone was getting stressed and frustrated about the issue. :)

Soon to sleep...