Roundup of Hack24 – we salute you Nottingham!

COMMUNITY

Paul Shannon, VP Technology shares his thoughts as a judge during the Hack24 mega hackathon the other weekend:

“The overriding sentiment I picked up from Hack24 was how well run and how well supported it was. I agree completely with that, the TechNottingham Team (mostly Emma and Andrew) had everything prepared with some clever little twists and highlights that made the event about much more than programming all night long.

The venue was a set of soundproofed rooms in the corridors around Broadway Cinema’s Screen 4 – all aptly named after technology greats just like at 7digital:

There was also a relaxation lounge with massages, comfy seats and a PlayStation where I was able to give a few high quality audio headphone demonstrations to tempt people into completing our challenge. The real coup for the organisers though was having control of the cinema screen from 10:30pm. We were treated to a technology-themed version of Family Fortunes, followed by some high quality audio through the cinema’s sound system and then the PlayStation on the cinema’s screen. The night time entertainment concluded with a screening of 1995 cult classic Hackers, naturally.

Effort from the hacker teams was relentless with most opting to forgo sleep to get that extra commit of code into their projects. I was impressed by the imagination and variety of hacks on offer. Mashups were the order of the day with data from Sequensis displayed on an interactive Google Map, text messages to play film based games and a giant multi-coloured button doing everything from updating your calendar to texting you Taylor Swift Lyrics.

The winning hack for 7digital’s challenge was by the team of headline sponsor, Esendex. It took mood and music data, and used our API to create a mood based, shared music experience:

A synchronised, shared music experience with added context is right in the zeitgeist of where we’re seeing music applications going. Our services are geared to creating this more involved and rich experiences and the Esendex team really worked hard to bring all the elements together. Their winning entry also included an integration to Twitter and, because they knew it so well, an integration to their own API so that you could tweet or text your mood to update the playlist of the room you were listening it. Great but tiring work.”

For the official summary of Hack24’s long weekend, checkout their blog here!