Startup Bus 2019 starting off!

On your marks!

In under 2 minutes, I'll be joining folks from all around North America on the Startup Bus, a competition where teams assemble to create businesses on a bus over the course of 3 days en route to New Orleans. It'll be rigorous. I suppose calling it the Startup Bus is a bit of a misnomer: 7 buses from all across North America are converging on New Orleans. In any case, that's a nitpick not worth delving into.

Indeed, the buses are heading to New Orleans, but how are they getting there? There are 6 different origin sites:

1. San Mateo, CA
2. Mexico City, MX,
3. Akron, OH
4. Tampa, FL
5. Washington, DC
6. New York, NY (2 buses from here)

I'll be coming from DC, so my bus ride will probably entail a tour of the South!

What might that look like? Glad that you asked! To prepare for the competition, I've put in some research. Based on my prep, here are the most likely itineraries for my bus:

• DC-Richmond-Raleigh/Durham-Charlotte-Atlanta-Chattanooga-New Orleans
• DC-Richmond-Raleigh/Durham-Charlotte-Atlanta-Chattanooga-Nashville-Birmingham-Biloxi-New Orleans
• DC-Pittsburgh-Cincinnati-Louisville-Nashville-Memphis-Jackson-New Orleans
• DC-Pittsburgh-Cincinnati-Louisville-Nashville-Huntsville-Birmingham-Biloxi-New Orleans
• DC-Pittsburgh-Cincinnati-Louisville-St. Louis-Memphis-Jackson-New Orleans
• DC-Louisville-Nashville-Chattanooga-Atlanta-Birmingham-Biloxi-New Orleans
• DC-Richmond-Raleigh/Durham-Charlotte-Jacksonville-Biloxi-New Orleans
• DC-Pittsburgh-Charlotte-Atlanta-Mobile-Biloxi-New Orleans
• DC-Akron-Charlotte-Atlanta-Mobile-Biloxi-New Orleans
• DC-Pittsburgh-Louisville-St. Louis-Memphis-Jackson-New Orleans

Do you have a guess? Put it in the comments section of this post!

Get Set!

Even aside from guessing itineraries, preparation is the name of the game. The bus might not have the the most reliable wifi, so I had to download pertinent software libraries to my computer. Here are a few of the libraries, frameworks, tools, and documentation that I downloaded:

• Android Studio - for creating mobile interactions in Kotlin (Java too, but I'm teaching myself Kotlin now)
• React Native - for creating more mobile interactions, but in Javascript, my strongest programming language
• Hackathon Starter Kit - the most reliable template library for node.js-based hackathoning
• Framer.js (the open source part of Framer X) - great for simulating mobile interactions

Go!

And we're off to the race! I'll post intermittently to let you know how things are progressing. :-)