field notes · 2025 · 7 min

What 993K views taught me

spoiler: it wasn't the view count.

SSpurHacks needed people to actually show up, not just a following that felt good to look at. Canada's largest hackathon, a short runway before registration closed, and an audience of Gen Z students who could smell a boring caption from three scrolls away. My job was to make people care enough to apply.

Twenty-three reels later, one of them did something I hadn't planned for: 816K+ views on its own, more than triple anything else I made. I refreshed the dashboard like it owed me something. Then I checked applications and found out the view count and the signups were, at best, distant cousins.↑ the algorithm plays favorites and I've accepted this

A view is someone's thumb pausing for two seconds. An application is someone rearranging their week for you. Those are not the same ask.

The reels that actually converted weren't the flashiest ones. They were the ones answering a question a nervous first-year was too embarrassed to ask out loud: what do I even bring to a hackathon, is it too late to apply, do I need a team already. Unglamorous content, disproportionate results.

993K+ combined views, 2,279 applications, one very large hackathon that didn't run out of people. The number I actually put on my resume isn't the view count.still not over the 816K one, if I'm honest