When I signed up to be a Game of Learners season 3 team captain, I had no idea what I was getting into. When I got the role, I was beyond myself with excitement. Then it dawned on me, "What exactly had I signed up for?”. On googling previous seasons of Game of Leaners though, I was even more excited to start this journey.

A little bit about Game of Learners:

Game of Learners is a six week hackathon that has been conducted annually since 2020 by the Microsoft Africa Development center, Nairobi. The competition is open for young people in the University from East and Southern Africa. The participants are divided into teams of five(including the team captain) and paired with mentors, who are professionals working at Microsoft to guide them through the competition.

I’d finally have the push to start and finish a project instead of the numerous projects I start and seldom finish on Github.(Fellow developers, this is your sign to go complete that one project you keep promising you’ll finish😂)

Before Game of learners started though, we had to select the members of our teams. This we got to do physically from the Microsoft ADC offices in Westlands. This was my first time ever visiting the Microsoft ADC offices so believe me when I tell you that the night before felt a lot like the eve of a high school trip . The office and the people did not at all disappoint; I’d go into more details but you didn’t click on this article to learn about the Microsoft ADC office, Nairobi architecture.

Now, let’s delve into what each week in the six week experience involved:

Each week had a sprint assigned to it with deliverables. In week one, we had sessions from various professionals in the tech field(both from within and outside Microsoft) who took us through various tools we could use for our projects like GitHub, Microsoft Azure services and the power platform services. At the end of the first week, the theme for Game of Learners season 3 was finally released- CLIMATE CHANGE AND SUSTAINABILITY.

The details above are what was happening with the Game of Leaners Ambassadors. With my team mates known, I reached out to all of them, created our WhatsApp group and set up our first call. The first call was somewhat informal because I understood it would be important for us to create a good rapport that would allow us to work better together over the course of the next six weeks. Did it work? Did creating a good rapport with my team really ease our experience working together? You’ll never know till you get to the end of this article now will you?🤗

PS: It is during our first call that we came up with our amazing team name: TEAM HACK OVERFLOW.

Theme all set, Learning paths we were supposed to learn for the cloud skills challenge released, teams created, it was time to explore and figure out what our game changing solution for Game of Learners season 3 would be.

What I really loved about our solution was that it integrated ideas from various team members. Our solution was known as Carbon sprint. Follow the Link and check out our submission on Devpost.

We wanted to implement our solution as a mobile app that would allow users to be able to track their carbon footprint, learn using fun games and have a community of like-minded climate enthusiasts.

We eventually implemented it as a web app because as I mentioned before, we only had six weeks to present a tangible(not necessarily complete) solution to the panelists. That and we had our amazing mentors Philip and Viola to support us, push us, encourage us and all in all keep us on track.

In conclusion, it wasn’t easy, but boy was it fun, insightful and a great learning experience. That we, five individuals who didn’t know one another prior to Game of Learners season 3 would come together and hack around a solution that could be a game changer for our planet, still humbles me to date.

If you clicked on this article because you were looking for information about game of learners, or you were scrolling through Hashnode and decided to try something new, or you’re one of my friends who I sent this article to, whatever reason caused you to click on this article, here’s why you should participate in Game of Leaners:

The chance to create a solution within six weeks with a new team.

1. The amazing networks you stand to make
2. Support from Microsoft as you build your solution(each team was assigned two Microsoft employees to be their mentors)
3. The opportunity to learn and hack through the Microsoft Learn modules
4. Weekly airtime sent to research and complete modules(I’d gotten used to that comfort)
5. Supportive Game of Learners ambassadors who work tirelessly to ensure you have everything you need to launch a successful project
6. The opportunity to push yourself and work on a product that real life customers can use.

I could go on and on, but dear reader, get involved, push yourself; today, choose to do hard things, And if you're in the university, participate in Game of Learners.