Disrupt Hackathon

Two years ago Steve and Jared spent a couple days hacking at the Disrupt Hackathon and ended up with GroupMe which went on to great success and an eventual sale to Skype.

For the past 24 hours, developers have been busy hacking away at Pier 94 trying to do the same. The demos will take place at Pier 94 from 11am until roughly 2pm, when the awards will be given out.

If you have a few hours free today and can resist the Party In Prospect Park or some other outdoor event on a beautiful spring day in NYC, you should head over to Pier 94 and check it out. Attendance is free but you do need to register on eventbrite.

#Web/Tech

Comments (Archived):

  1. aminTorres

    ahh mannn!, sold out… would have loved to go.

    1. jason wright

      Go anyway and bluff your way in.

      1. Matt A. Myers

        Just say you’re an AVC’er and they should just let ya in!

      2. Adrian Sanders

        We did that last year. You just walk to the front of the line and pen your name in.

    2. fredwilson

      participation in the hackathon is sold out. but viewing it is not. all you need to do is register.

      1. Luc

        Don’t even need to register … I just showed up with a friend, and they let us right in.Looking forward to seeing some good hacks!

  2. Nate Kidwell

    I’m there now hacking away. I built SingleSlide.com – still putting on finishing touches.My hack instantly turns APIs into prezi-esque slideshows (in html5, etc.). Only uses the three APIs that have prizes of course…

    1. Matt A. Myers

      Sounds cool. Good luck!

    2. Matt A. Myers

      P.S. Hook that badboy up with Storify

    3. Dave W Baldwin

      @mattamyers:disqus is right… read into Storify the words story board 😉

    4. fredwilson

      cool. i am hoping to swing by and catch some of the demos

  3. Rebecca

    Do participants pre-hack? Or is all the coding done on site?

    1. Nate Kidwell

      You’re usually supposed to do everything on site, but once in a while people game the honor system.

  4. Matt A. Myers

    @fredwilson:disqus Just a head’s up.. I posted two comments, as replies, neither is showing up . No idea why.Edit: Scratch that.. now they are showing up.

    1. fredwilson

      i looked to see if they are stuck in the moderation system but could not find them

      1. Dale Allyn

        I had the same problem on yesterday’s post (last night), but it resolved after a while. I sent a note to Disqus, and followed-up with info that posts now show. Seems like some latency at play, or maybe they’re tuning the spam filters.

        1. Matt A. Myers

          I imagine it’s a multi-layer spam filter/check. The messages I posted were relatively short, not my standard length – though I should be seen as a trusted poster based on comment numbers, etc..If it was still intentional I could see it being beneficial in that if clever malware ever got onto my computer that it wouldn’t be able to go to sites powered with Disqus’ and get spam through that way.If not, there’s an idea for @Disqus / @fredwilson:disqus

  5. Adrian Sanders

    We had to miss it this year as we’re pushing out an iOS app. This means, unfortunately, that we can’t follow up to our winning hack from last year venturecrapital.us with the multiplayer version ;)Excited to see what others come up with this year tho! Best of luck to everyone.

  6. Mike Bradshaw

    Who knew that Chattanooga, TN has something NYC does not? Chatt’s electric power board has built out a gigabit fiber optic network connected to tens of thousands of users. The Gig City is hosting seven finalist competing for a $100,000 prize designed to stimulate the development of applications, using the city as a gig speed laboratory. http://www.thegigcity.com/g… — Put early August on your calendars to visit Chatt (aka Scenic City) when the prize will be awarded.Fred, I would have posted this information privately to you, but the Contact page is throwing a blank. Love your archives, btw. I’ll use them this semester in an Entrepreneurship class at UTC (thanks for using Creative Commons!)

    1. Dave W Baldwin

      Looks good Mike.

    2. Matt A. Myers

      Awesome. Thanks for sharing. It will be interesting to see what comes of it. I imagine what’s possible will then be dependant on CPU speeds.

  7. rzr

    what’s the hashtag to follow along? thx.

  8. William Mougayar

    Kudos to all the participants hacking. It’s such a beautiful and hot day today, either way, you’ll be sweating outside or inside.Looking forward to all the great products that will come out of it.

  9. Ronen Mendezitsky

    No live broadcasting huh?

  10. ShanaC

    I just found out about a party in prospect park….gahhh

    1. ShanaC

      Point a) wow googa mooga tickets are crazy expensive.point b) how do you hear about this stuff Fred?

      1. fredwilson

        These are the folks who put on Banaroo and Outer Lands in SF. They have been working on it for years. Gotham Gal skewered them in her post today. She is right in all her criticisms but I give them props for doing it. Great idea. Needs better execution

        1. Dave Pinsen

          Saw that: “a tad barbaric”.Next time, take the family out to the Sussex County fairgrounds in NJ. There are some good festivals there over the summer (e.g., The Crawfish Fest). And you won’t get soaked for $250 per day and not get enough to eat.

          1. fredwilson

            Great idea. We will give them a try

        2. ShanaC

          I saw that post. Still, I would love to try the outdoor concert thing, and I have no idea where to start looking….

  12. Adrian Bye

    thanks for the pointer fred; i went over, it was interesting to watch

    1. fredwilson

      I liked poachbase

  14. Camille LeBlanc

    He’s right. It was a blast. Still recovering from the sheer bliss of building something with complete strangers @sidewinder now in formation stage. Woot!