This is the fourth blog I'm writing about my experiences in Tagisan ng Talino Codefest, a series of annual mobile-development hackathons hosted across the STI Colleges network. The competition is divided into three levels: local, cluster, and national. Champions of the local level advance to the cluster level, competing against other local champions, and cluster winners then move on to the national stage, facing the best of the best. Out of thousands of IT and computer science students across STI Colleges, only 24 students qualify for the national level, with 8 designated as team captains.
At the local and cluster levels, teams have six hours to develop their app solutions. At the national level, however, we were given 36 hours to tackle the problem statement. The rules were strict: no AI, StackOverflow, or external websites were allowed, only the official documentation of the frameworks or libraries we were using. For example, React Native teams could only refer to the official React Native documentation, and Android Studio teams only to the official Android docs. This year's event took place from May 13 to 15, 2025.
I was the team captain of Cluster 1, representing STI College Ortigas-Cainta. Having participated in hackathons that required overnight work at the venue, I was already primed for the intensity ahead.
The challenge is to build a mobile application that promotes transparency, civic engagement, and accountability in the wake of the 2025 Philippine elections. The app should empower citizens to report corruption, monitor government projects, and access public data securely and easily. Key features include public project monitoring, anonymous whistleblowing, open data dashboards, and community scoreboards. The platform must also support role-based access for users and admins to ensure proper permissions and functionality.
You can explore the project and the code we've written during the hackathon here: Transpend GitHub Repository
I talked to my fellow Codefest National Finalists, shared our GitHub profiles, and had some casual conversations. We developed our mobile application with Android Studio and Java, we ate some free food during the competition, we presented it within 15 minutes to the judges, and overall had quite a lot of fun programming.
We didn't end up winning the hackathon after the 36-hour sprint, but I walked away with incredibly valuable lessons. I gained sharp insights and saw clearly where I could improve. I realized that I'd been so focused on sharpening my core technical abilities, writing fast, clean, and scalable code, that I'd neglected ideation. You can be an exceptional programmer, but if your idea doesn't stand out, you'll still fall behind. Technical skill gives you capability; ideation gives you direction. And without direction, even the best skills can only take you so far.
Ideation has always been something I took for granted. I've used mind-mapping and other brainstorming methods I learned from books like Getting Things Done by David Allen when starting new projects, but I hadn't grasped their full significance until the hackathon. After this experience, though, I've come to see ideation as a core skill worth mastering. Technical ability drives execution, but ideation sets the direction, and it's that direction that can unlock your full potential.
We were still awarded a trophy at the end of the competition, one given to all national finalists. The Champion, 1st Runner-up, and 2nd Runner-up teams, of course, received different trophies. Ever since, I've kept mine on top of my desk as a constant reminder of the experience: a reminder of how far we'd come, from winning both the local- and cluster-level Codefest competitions to reaching the national stage. After the event, we were transferred to a four-star hotel with free meals and adequate rest. The following days were spent on a college-funded tour, visiting historical landmarks and enjoying high-end buffets, all as a way to celebrate the achievements of the national finalists.
When I returned home on May 17, 2025, I felt it had all been worth it. I experienced my first airplane ride, enjoyed luxurious buffets, explored stunning sights during the college-funded tour, and grew significantly as a software developer. There's plenty more to say about my time at Codefest Nationals, but I'll wrap it up here for now. After this experience, I continued my journey of self-improvement, participating in more competitions, some I won, some I didn't, each one building on what I had learned.