Thetus hosted the first ever Vibrant Data PDX Hackathon this past weekend. The Vibrant Data Project is a group of technologists with the collective goal “to make data more present and alive, useful and valuable in the daily lives of people.” With one very full day of coding ahead of them, 90 participants from various backgrounds came together to create apps focused on converting data into personal and social good. The attendees split into teams to work on nine different project ideas around increasing the value of data. There were three judges on hand to help pick out the team winner of the day. Our very own CEO, Danielle Forsyth, was one of the featured judges, along with Steve Rosenbaum, CEO of PopArt, and John Sherry, Director of Business Innovation Research at Intel.
Coding away …
For more information on the Vibrant Data Project, visit here
The nine projects from the Hackathon are listed below with a short description of each.
Healthy Insights (the 1st place winner!)
This app allows users to record many health related aspects of daily life – exercise, food, mood — and share the data with friends and family. Users help each other create healthy trends. A possible benefit is to use the data for obtaining discounts in health insurance.
Adaptive Mesh Networks (Tied for 2nd)
This is an app that would enable protesters to stay organized via their cell phones outside the cellular network, i.e. using Bluetooth and or WiFi. The technique would be a counter-measure to a repressive government turning off service during an uprising. Users can spread a message through a crowd by bumping their phones together. An initial demo was shown.
EMoo.me (Tied for 2nd)
Expanding upon an ongoing project to track personal mood, this app brought in the feelings of the crowd during its demo via text message. Possible use cases could be in shows, classrooms and meetings.
Healthy Images (4th place)
This app aims to aggregate health-related images and stories submitted by users with the goal to lower cost and improve quality and the experience of health care. This team believes citizens are an untapped resource for stories of public health.
Groups working on their projects at the Hackathon
Clutch (5th place)
Clutch aggregates social connections across a user’s networks to better find people who have similar interests. It is a more intention-based search service than traditional search.
Poncho
It’s about staying dry on your bike commute by getting push notified of incoming bad weather. In one day, the team was able to create the app and put it up in an app store. Custom alerts and partnerships with employers are seen as possible upgrades.
Ecommuter
Ecommuter expands your commuting possibilities. Through accurate commuter matching and travel performance tracking, Ecommuter generates trusted recommendations for nearby ride share partners, provides discounts on convenient vehicle sharing services, and generates data to improve public transportation planning for your community. Simply select your preferences and Ecommuter helps you create a better commute and save the planet one trip at a time.
My Future Self
A team formed around two employees from EpicOnline.org, a company that promotes creating more effective college students. This app is about getting students in contact with opportunities using a personal database of student diagnostics, social network activity, educational data, workforce and salary data. It allows for employers to find students who fit work needs and empowers students to take on their own future. Ongoing development is planned.
Meebl
Meebl is a tool to analyze and view personal browsing history. It helps you analyze and visualize your surfing by time and category of site. It makes use of a public categorization of 30,000 different domain names. The initial demo showed analysis of one month’s surfing.
For more information on the follow up to these apps, visit here
Starting on Monday, April 22nd anyone interested in Big Data will have the opportunity to fill their week with relevant events organized by local industry thought leaders. The DC festival has all the bases covered with topics ranging from Natural Language Processing to Challenges of Visualizing and Exploring Big Data to Social Network Analysis. The goal behind Big Data Week is to unite the global data communities (business, health, science, technology, retail, entertainment etc) through a series of events and meetups around the globe. If you’re not in DC, check out the site to see other cities who are also hosting Big Data Week events.
