Pozo Hackathon: The Jamboree Picker

Everytime we organize a Jamboree we spend a lot of time deciding where to go. There are so many amazing places that you can go and we all have our own ideas. It's great fun to discuss for a long time, but it also costs a lot of time.

So during the Hackathon Jon whipped up a script that takes all the things we find important for a Jamboree, collects data and then spits out a list of the best candidates. Jon calls it the Jamboree Picker.

So what are the ingredients of his secret sauce?

1. Can we get there easily?
We need to be able to get frequent (and cheap) flights from Amsterdam, Berlin and Zurich. Jon had a database of flight connections to rate each destination.

2. Are there great places to rent on AirBnB?
We are 15 people. We want an awesome place with one big room where we can all work and code. Jon scraped AirBnB to find out how good the destinations were.

3. Is it an exciting destination?
We have our own algorithms to tell us that. Let's add them to the mix!

4. How is the weather?
Jon is from Stockholm and there is a good reason he isn't living in Sweden any more. We want good weather - so for each destination we add a weather score based on historical weather date for the month we want to go.

5. How far is it?
We don't want to fly too far. New York is the max, really.

After one day of coding the script was done. The following list is for June - which is a bit easier Weatherwise than January. The fact that the numbers 1 and 2 of the list are two places where we recently went for a Jamboree indicated that we are onto something.