A few days ago Microsoft announced a new hackathon focused on .NET and Microsoft Graph.
The hackathon is for beginners but you can participate if you know Microsoft Graph & .NET as well.
This hackathon will provide a jump-start to your app development skills with Microsoft Graph by guiding you through building apps based on the Top Microsoft Graph Scenarios provided.

Last but not the least, you have the chance to win exiting prizes like a Microsoft Xbox!

The hackathon starts on March 1st and ends on ** March 15th**.

First Step

If you decide to participate to the hackathon, register yourself to the following link: https://aka.ms/hack-together/register.
It's mandatory!

Second Step

Join the live sessions or watch the recording on YouTube.
It's very important to follow these videos because you can learn a lot of stuff and you can also be inspired by Microsoft Cloud Advocates and other speakers.
You can add the sessions to your calendar by following this link: https://aka.ms/hack-together/sessions or you can click on a single session in the list below:

• March 1st - Watch On Demand 🎥: Kickoff Hack Together: Microsoft Graph and .NET! What can you do with Microsoft Graph .NET SDK?

• March 2nd - Join Live 📺: Microsoft Graph Product Managers will show you how to get started with Microsoft Graph .NET SDK!

• March 8th - Join Live 📺: Microsoft Graph Product team and .NET Advocates join the Ask the Experts session to answer your questions. Get to know them!

• March 15th - Join Live 📺: We're at the end of Hack Together, but the journey doesn't end here. What's next: learn how you can join the community!

Step Three

Find a good project to develop. Maybe, at least for me, one of the worst moment for an hackathon.
But Microsoft helps us to find a good idea by creating a list of real scenarios you can use: Top Microsoft Graph Scenarios

Step Four

Submit your project when you are ready, but before March 15th!
You can use the following link to submit your project before the due date: 🚀 Project Submission.

More information

If you want to find more information about the hackathon, you can read them on the official GitHub Repository.
Here you can find information about setting up a dev environment, templates for your project (Blazor, MAUI, Console Application and much more).

Why did I decide to participate?

I use Microsoft Graph and .NET every day at work, because this is my tech stack for my projects.
I use this stack for my side projects as well.
So, why did I decide to participate to the hackathon?
Because I am a forever learner and a side project is a good gym to test your limit and learn something new.
For instance, in this project I decided to use Fluent UI for Blazor.
I just did some experiments with it, but I never used it on a real project. The time has come.
In addition I will use Blazor WASM. It's not common for me to use WASM directly. 99% of the time in my project I use Blazor WASM hosted.
I think these two reasons are enough.

The Project

After two hours of brainstorming I chose my project.
It will be a dashboard with some information about the day of user: the last emails, the next appointments in the calendar, todo items, the weather (based on the city field in Azure Active Directory) and much more.

Something like this.
I will publish the solution in an Azure Static Web App and everyone can use the application as a Start Page of the browser.
What do you think?

Time Management

I don't have too much time to spend on the project in the next weeks, but I try to have a 1 hour blocker each day until March 15th (expect for the weekend).
It's more or less 8-10 hours of working on the project.
Not too much, not too less. I think I can do it.
I will try to post every day with a summary of the activities.

See you tomorrow and have a nice hackathon :)

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Emanuele BartolesiFollow

🏆 Microsoft MVP & GitHub Star ⭐ | 🔓 Auth0 Ambassador & 📢 Codemotion Ambassador | 👨‍🎓 LinkedIn Technical Instructor