AT&T Mobile App Hackathon | Superheroes & Geeks, Only in Hollywood!

On July 27, 2012 the AT&T Developer Program and Apigee produced the Mobile App Hackathon in Los Angeles, California. Spearheaded by Alex Donn, the event was designed for both technical and non-technical attendees to build apps over the course of a weekend at Io/La, an incubator/co-work space in the heart of Hollywood. This was a free event boasting prizes for winners of various categories such as cash, gift cards, free month stay at Io/La and many more! Breakfast, lunch and dinner were also provided, as well as snacks and other swag –like t-shirts, posters, markers, water bottles, energy drinks, bags, notebooks, etc.

The Hackathon introduced attendees to the latest cutting edge tools fully hosted on the cloud. Developers were allowed to code in any language they were most comfortable with including Objective C, Java, Javascript, HTML, C #, Dot Net, and XNA. There were people walking around the room with orange ties called Senseis that were there specifically to mentor and support developers with programming issues.

I joined a group of amazing developers and we created Venue Pop, a location-based social trivia game for venues to entertain patrons, draw in more customers and provide analytics and other various marketing data. Making the most of our location, the Venue Pop team decided to have fun with the pitch and demo by featuring two superheroes. We walked over down to Hollywood Blvd. in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater and invited over some characters. Only in Hollywood are you able to mash up Superheroes and Geeks in one big room!  Our last question in our trivia demo was ,“Who is your favorite superhero?” With that queue, Superman and Wonder Woman ran in the room holding up a sign saying “I love Venue Pop!” We ended up earning 1^st place for using AT&T Cloud Architect. Kudos to the rockstar developers and designer in my team. For a more detailed version of Venue Pop’s story, written by Daniel Lewis, please visit Sympletech.

There were many cool apps created over that weekend. Not just apps for fun and games but many to solve real life problems. One app in particular was Family Heartbeat. They created a platform  for communication between family members who has a loved one admitted in the hospital. It provides a means of support for one another as well as a hub for updates on the patient’s well being and progress.

The three days of hard work, hectic schedules and creative atmosphere provided participants with the opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals and incredible talent. This in turn creates a supportive ecosystem for the entrepreneurial minds to create a company from vision to concept, if not that weekend, but in the near future.

Here is a list of the winners.

• Best App using AT&T APIs 1^st Place: Light Cycle Reconfigure
• Best App using AT&T Cloud Architect 1st Place: Venue Pop
• Best App using AT&T mHealth APIs 1^st Place: Remedy
• Best App using Apigee Usergrid 1^st Place: Family Heartbeat
• Best Hackathon Overall App 1^st Place: Split Earth, 2^nd Place: Family Heartbeat, 3^rd Place” Light Cycle Reconfigure

For upcoming AT&T Mobile App events in cities near you, please visit Alex Donn’s eventbrite.

Denise Walker

Denise Walker is the founder and CEO of Digital Media Wave, a Digital Agency focused on game changing enterprises that have a global impact. She is a proud trojan earning a B.S in Business Administration from USC with a Concentration in Entrepreneurship. Denise loves Boba, Science, Space, Time Travel, learning about new technology and startups, reading inspirational/business books, connecting with great people, salsa dancing and is a proud Whovian!

More Posts - Twitter - Facebook