Mixmax is a communications platform that brings professional communication & email into the 21st century.
Last week, 12 contestants and a lively audience gathered at Mixmax headquarters to take part in DareDev: a fun coding competition and party. DareDev is part e-sports event, part hackathon, but with a new take. The challenge is to implement a set of given designs using HTML/CSS and absolutely no previews in the browser. Everyone had an amazing time, and we wanted to share this recap with folks who couldn’t make it.
The Setup
Contestants are seated in two rows facing each other and with monitors in facing away from them. Each display shows the original design on one-side, and the competitor’s work on the other. The audience can see progress in real-time, but contestants cannot see the results of their own work until the round is over. As contestant, you can see other contestants’ screens on the row opposite yours. (Pressure!)
The competition consists of three 20 minute rounds, each with a theme and after each round the audience gets to vote on their favorites by building Duplo towers (on arriving, each audience member gets three pieces of Duplo).
The Themes
This time, we had 3 great thematic designs:
The first theme was ‘Nostalgia’, for which we were asked to reimplement Google’s original website.
The second challenge (themed ‘Hollywood’) was to copy the poster from the movie ‘The Net’.
The third and final challenge (themed ’Too soon’) was to reimplement healthcare.gov’s front-end in less than 20 mins!
Outcomes
The contestants did a fantastic job! For google.com we got to see some incredible dropshadows and reinventions of the iconic logo.
’The Net’ poster was apparently deemed too easy by one contestant who took some real poetic license with the task (each repo contained some easter egg assets).
healthcare.gov was by far the trickiest, so much so that one contestant felt it needed enhancements.
At the end, the audience elected the three front-runners and stacking the duplo towers against each other Kelly Walker was elected DareDev 2015! She was followed by Matej Jan in second place and Trish Ang in third place. Major shout out to all the contestants who put up a good fight! And to the audience for cheering everyone along with such gusto! Until very soon!
Video
Join the team making DareDev happen! We’d love to hear from you. Reach us on Twitter too, @Mixmax.
