Remarkable Success at the Back-to-School Hackathon
On Sept 30th – Oct 2nd students and young professionals took their laptops and spent the day building cool projects at Notman House for the Back-to-School Hackathon hosted by Startupifier and Tech Think Tank, and sponsored by Forever Alive, Context.io, and McGill CSUS. The goal was simple: build something cool/profitable, exchange ideas and knowledge, and make connections through an extraordinary networking environment.
The Brief
On Friday September 30th, developers and designers met at 6pm for a quick intro to Google App Engine, the web framework from Google. At 7pm, people started to brainstorm ideas, met other great participants, and formed teams. On Saturday morning, these people gathered for coffee and breakfast before beginning a long day of intense hacking, building, and coding. Then at 7 PM pencils were down and everyone presented their projects and the invited panel of guest judges chose a winner.
About Hackathons
Hackathons are a great way to kickstart a project, meet people, learn and have fun in a productive way. It allows you to really focus on creating an MVP. Nothing extra, but easy to see if people get excited about what you’ve built. It is also a great way to get to know the Montreal startup community and meet founders.
Startupifier and Tech Think Tank
Startupifier is a Montreal group run by and for students, recent graduates and young entrepreneurs with the aim of fostering the local startup community. They host events and run projects to get people working together and to connect them with the right information, experience and resources to get them started in entrepreneurship.
Tech Think Tank is a McGill group concerned with bringing out the best in student ideas, technology and innovation. They envision breeding a creative culture within McGill’s technological community and starting meaningful interactions with the tech world outside the campus walls. Their activities include guest speakers, demo days, and group brainstorming.
More information coming up on startupifier.com (join our newsletter), follow us on Twitter. Connect with us on Facebook: Tech Think Tank and Startupifier
Back to School Hackathon Results
After a full day of planning, designing and, and coding, 10 teams presented at the Back to School Hackathon on October 1st, 2011. Judging the projects was a 5 person panel consisting of members of the Montreal tech community: Robin Ahn, Dov Amihod, Claude Theoret, Cyril, and Bruno Morency. Here is a summary of the presenters and the judges’ picks:
Teams that presented
- Snap to Vote - @marcbeaupre
+1 for real life using QR codes
- Fastimum - @arcbees
System for restaurants and customers to get food fast
- Coolspace – @jonotron
Personalized social discovery game environment
- Cloud-based Python doc search
Optimized searching for Python docs
- Box me not! – @mhuebert
A passive aggressive social networking tool to box your friends. Facebook Application.
- Wikinotes – Twitter: @wikinotes_ca, Site: www.wikinotes.ca
McGill based collaborative study tool, to help you succeed in your courses
- Tasklable
A Facebook app to ask for help from your social network and offer your own
- Paym.ent.io
community-based system for payment, using Bump & PayPal or cash
- Busr
SMS service to find out when the next bus comes, good for “dumb phones”
- Get Angry Montreal!
You can make your voice heard for issues that matters and view evidence on these issues.
Judges’ Picks (Top 3 received free hosting, courtesy of QITX)
- Most likely to go viral: Box Me Not!
- Most creative: Coolspace
- Good Citizen Award: Wikinotes
- Most useful, mundane application/most angry developer: Busr
- Most accomplished in one day: Snap to Vote
- Best design of a single icon: Fastimum
All around, there was an impressive turnout at the Hackathon, everyone got to see some very fine work.
Interested in participating at the next Hackathon? Mark your calendars because the organizers have already scheduled the next one for January 20th – 21st 2012. Hope to see you there!
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