True Growth Hackathon. A brief re-cap (Update 1 of 3).

Reference the original post here: https://41perspectives.wordpress.com/2014/03/31/updates-hackathons-big-data-mba/

As a loyal reader of my blog you’ll recall from my earlier post that I was working with Enterprise Saint John and some community volunteers to organize a Hackathon.

And organize a Hackathon we did! It was awesome!

The turnout was good and the level of engagement was tremendous. Through connecting the non-profit community with the ‘IT’ (developers, analysts, project managers, marketers and more) community (we had people from Saint John, Fredericton and even Prince Edward Island) we were able to come up with some pretty great ideas.

The ideas then lead to some brainstorming and product envisioning sessions that, a day and a half later, culminated in 3 working prototypes that the teams presented to a room full of creative and enthusiastic techies and non-techies and a panel of ‘judges’ that scored the teams on such things as working functionality, quality and innovation.

Everyone left with a prize, a handfull of new business cards/contacts, as well as a sense of excitement for the possibilities for the next Hackathon (tentatively envisioned for late spring/early Summer 2014; email me if you’re interested in getting on a mailing list for updates) and how these sorts of things really enhance Saint John as a destination for IT. (As validated – a short time after our Hackathon, no less – in this article in the Halifax Chronicle Herald where Saint John was selected as the ‘Best Community for Information Technology’)

Check out a few links about the Hackathon, the teams and the prototypes:

http://truegrowthhackathons.com/

http://truegrowthsj.com/2013/11/28/tghackathon/

http://truegrowthsj.com/2013/12/02/markhackathonrecap/

http://truegrowthsj.com/2013/12/05/combiningskills/

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23truegrowthhackathon&src=hash

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.648537915210002.1073741831.137463852984080&type=3