On Friday, over 80 people poured into the Beehive and ETC to compete in Baltimore’s first 48-hour Hackathon. By Sunday, 26 teams had formed and submitted “something cool built with hardware or software” to a panel that was judging their products within multiple categories and on multiple criteria such as creativity, ingenuity, and originality.
We tried to “live blog” the event ourselves and even capture live video of the hacking (which has been archived and can be viewed here). The Baltimore Sun even caught wind and wrote an article midway through the competition. Another fantastic point of coverage was from the Baltimore Hackathon’s tumblr blog, chock-full of photos and updates.
The event was clearly a success and as Brent Halliburton pointed out on his blog moments ago, the event’s main sponsor Tropo was very smart to “hijack the event”. Brent pointed out that their sponsorship was quite a marketing tactic and also aided to crowd-source their product by offering special prizes for submissions that took advantage of their API. I’m sure future Hackathons will attract some incredible sponsors willing to be quite generous to the attendees.
I recommend that the startup community in Baltimore keep an eye out on future Hackathons. They’re a great way to meet some talented individuals, capable of producing some incredibly innovative things in a short amount of time. In other locations, Hackathons have been the public springboards some small teams have used to launch their startups to stardom!
Below I’ve included some notes I took throughout the weekend –
Mon, 12:57 pm:
Final Award Results:
Best Individual Hardware: Black Candy Audio Scrambler Pedal
Best Individual Software: Fables: an iPad Interactive Ebook by Ray Wenderlich
Best Group Hardware: RotoFoto by Harford Hackerspace
Best Group Software: Headline Split-Testing by Brent Halliburton & Peter Bessman
Best Tropo App: Call-the-Door by Mike Brenner & John Dyer (w00t!)
Best Tropo App Runner Up: Parking Spot Locator
Best Tropo App 3rd Runner up (tie): CloudRant and VoiceBump by Brent Frederick
Audience Favorite: Nickel for Scale by Marty McGuire & Amy Hurst
Apologies that coverage of the event on our site basically stopped yesterday. Mid-way through the competition, I decided to jump in the fun and compete! More info was tumbled here » http://blog.baltimorehackathon.com
We did have a live cam up the whole weekend and, if you’re so inclined to watch, can view most of that archive here » http://bit.ly/bgnsen
A much more professional video of the awards will surface sometime this or next week. Stay tuned!
Huge crowd has formed in the 3rd floor of the ETC. Presentations have begun!
Watch our Video Interview with Fables at the Baltimore Hackathon.
Watch our Video Interview with LaterList at the Baltimore Hackathon.
Watch our Video Interview with BookShare.me at the Baltimore Hackathon.
Live feed is back up! Now the cam is in the conference room.
Just posted a blog entry to @brentcodes project “VoiceBump”. It converts phoned-in audio to a blog post!
Opening ceremonies have just finished with a HUGE crowd starting to fill in.
Live video feed is coming from my cell phone right now. Dedicated feed will start around 6 pm and last the whole weekend.
The Beehive is starting to fill up with t-shirts, prizes, and people! 60 minutes until this thing starts.
We’ll begin our coverage on Friday afternoon, stay tuned!
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