Martin
Beecroft, Head of Digital and Innovation at Meerkats, is at TechCrunch
Disrupt New York, which is being held on the Cruise Terminal Wharfs in
Brooklyn. Here's his diary of Day One.
The five-day
conference kicks off with a 48-hour Hackathon, which attracts teams from
around the globe to take part in a weekend ideation, design and build
event.
According to TechCrunch, 'Teams join forces to build a new
product, present it on the Disrupt stage to a panel of expert judges
and an audience of tens of thousands and compete for a variety of
prizes, including the chance to win free tickets to the Disrupt
Conference. Products created at the Disrupt Hackathon have seen great
success beyond the event, like GroupMe which was created overnight and
ultimately acquired by Skype for $80M.'
Day one of the event kicked off with meeting people from around the
world who have descended on the remote docks of Brooklyn. The drawcard
for us all was the enticing promise of winning major sponsorship and
backing for the winning idea from the global-powerhouses sponsoring the
event (think Microsoft, Amazon Alexa, Harmon, Twilio to name but a few)
as well as gaining the ultimate kudos for being able to showcase your
smarts in front of some of the best digital minds on the planet.
With
thousands of dollars of prize money and hardware up for grabs it's
serious stuff. Sleeping bags, pillows, pizza boxes, monitors, standing
desks - you name it - everything was brought in for a cozy night of
hacking.
The first thing that strikes me is the amount of
pre-oganised hacking teams such as 'Cripsy Bacon' - a team of five from
Italy who have come purely for the weekend Hackathon. For those like me
in the 'singles club' it doesn't take long to meet with people and
figure out a connection - be it around language, type of career or just
interests in music or technology.
The sponsors have all provided
platform or API information for each category to encourage hackers to
use their technology. Harmon have teams of 'sales' people wandering
around pushing their product and handing out discount vouchers and
stickers - so many stickers.
Then things kick off with a keynote
introduction listing the prizes and outlining where midnight pizza and
beer will be available. After that it's open house and we get down to
business. Teams sit around tables and debate the world of possibility.
As the evening pushes on there's people wandering around in VR gear,
teams talking to Alexa, circuit boards being soldered and even the odd
person already asleep on the desk. It doesn't take long for the place to
descend into headphones and hackers busy spilling cokes and making
magic.
After a very long night teams start the last frantic push
for the 9.30am submission deadline. All managed via Devpost, teams have
to submit their 'elevator pitch' followed by a full breakdown of the
project - listing APIs, languages, frameworks and anything else that
makes the project look good. There are full product demo videos being
submitted, with most teams having created fully named and branded
submissions. The competition is hot.
At 11am the weary teams
selected to pitch then go into a quick-fire one minute - yes just one
minute - presentation and pitch on the main stage. In front of hundreds
of people the 89 teams pitch their hacks with varied success. The
problematic Wi-Fi, the fact that Amazon Alexa doesn't want to speak to
anyone and the downright weird and whacky hacks have everyone laughing
and buzzing, although I think the copious amount of coffee and Redbull
being consumed is helping that significantly.
It's a fun end to
the Hack with most teams nailing their one minutes and the crowd of
hackers and general public - who've come in to see the pitches -
showing a true appreciation of the effort everyone has put in.
So after all the work - here's some of what this place can cook up in what is actually less than twenty-four hours of coding.
Spotonsos
- a live information flow from NYC data, which combined with mapping
and GPS, synchs notifications of problems with your journey. This lets
users know potential pedestrian issues such as building or road works
that might impact your walking journey.
Crate Zero - this was a
killer application that looked at better management of stock in
warehouses. Employees wear a coded-wearable that tracks and tags when
they 'dip' their hand into a crate or packaging area, tagging both the
'picker' and the item being picked as it's removed.
ELIZA - an
application that collects daily data from txts, emails and more to track
feelings and moods. This application links to helpful services such as
doctors and uses sentiment logic from IBM's Watson. A great app idea to
help with identifying symptoms such as stress - but also especially for
supporting vulnerable people.
Menu.me - A simple app which uses
mobile technology to read and recognise content on a menu and display
pictures of the food on their phone, allowing users to see the dish they
were ordering. Connected to nutritional facts and ingredients this has
value in every restaurant!
VR Party - An epic idea to use visual
reality to link DJs to parties, allowing them to hook up and play music
as if they were right there In the room. With virtual decks allowing
multiple DJs to join, the ability to have one hell of a party with a
great DJ on the other side of the world is cool.
Movie Chain Game
- one of the pitches that struggled with Amazons Alexa but it was a fun
idea. Basically Alexa quizzes your knowledge of movies to select one
for you to watch. Simple and a lot of fun if you're having a movie night
in.
Centitech - Basically selects the type of email address and
person you're sending the email to and changes the sentiment and content
to match ensuring you never send the boss or your mum the wrong email!
Last
but by no means least - Pet Care Bot. The robot that keeps your pet
company while you're working. With live cameras, feeding ability,
tracking ability and ultimately the ability to make you feel ok that you
left the dogs at home while you buggered off half way round the world
to a tech conference. This has (four) legs!
And if you are still
reading and are wondering - our team came up with Scent, an Esri mapping
solution to assist rescue teams in times of crisis. Scent pinpoints
people in need of assistance as well as the emergency response teams by
tracking device pings such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth for example. This then
enables the response teams to track and monitor their response and also
identify through the client application where to deliver aid such as
emergency services, food, water, helicopter support and much more.
Looking at recent fire zones with limited visibility as an example, this
sort of tech could help save lives and help rescue teams co-ordinate a
better and more efficient response. For our efforts Esri, the category
sponsor, gave us second place.
Now to catch up on some sleep
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