This post is written by 2011 hackNY Fellow Jared Wyatt of NYU
The weather is chilly now, but a warm and joyous time of year is fast approaching. Italians refer to it as Primavera, English-speaking Swedes call it Spring, but student hackers know it as the hackNY 24-hour Student Hackathon.
Oh, yes, friends, get your game face on, for the time is nigh at hand when students gather to hack on API’s from some of the freshest startups in New York City. The hackNY 24-hour Student Hackathon is a great place to show off your mad skills, learn some new ones, and rub shoulders with other student hackers and superawesome NYC tech startups.
So come join us on March 24th and 25th at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, where the flow of creative tech juices will be matched only by the flow of coffee, Red Bull, and burritos.
We have much to be thankful for — the week before Thanksgiving, 1500+ members of New York’s tech community gathered at the State Armory for Raise Cache, a benefit for hackNY organized by Rebecca Zhou and Kane Sarhan.
The event was a tremendous success and over $100,000 was raised for hackNY. The money will be used to continue to federate the next generation of hackers for the New York innovation community.
It was great seeing the outpouring of support from the community and we are extremely thankful to those that contributed and helped make this happen. We got together some former hackNY fellows to say thanks.
We’d like to thank the following for making this happen:
The Raise Cache Team
Bianca Campued, Brian Malkerson, Claire Knebl, Kane Sarhan, Karene Schloss, Kendall Brezinski, Mallory Blair, Meghan Grosso, Nolan Filter, Rachel Lin, Rebecca Zhou
Fashion Brands
Rent the Runway, Bonobos, Bauble Bar, Shoptiques, Proper Cloth, Of A Kind , The Cools , Market Publique , Source4Style , 72Lux , Carrie Hammer , Quincy , chloe + isabel, Stylecaster , Edition 01 , Lineby, Edition 01, Rent the Runway, Quincy , Bauble Bar, Bauble Bar, Katherine Kwei, Life Tie
Raffle and Auction
Broodr, Movie Pass, Jetsetter, Join Bklyn, Join Bklyn, Svpply, Gin Lane, Pivotal Labs, General Assembly, Fashion Center, Microsoft, Fueled, Sail Thru, Projective Space, Warby Parker, NewsCred, Total Control, Uber, Gilt City, Gansevoort Gramercy, Jack Robie, Loom Decor, NYTM, Everything Butt Art, Fitted Fashion, Aha.Life, Life Tiek
Models
Alex Nelson, Alexa Von Tobel, Alexis Tryon, Amy Cao, Andrew Rasiej, Ashley Granata, Aubrey Sabala, Brooke Moreland, Caren Maio, Carol Han , Caroline Scheinfeld, Carrie Hamerslag, Carter Cleveland, Cezary Pietrzak, Chris Paik, Christina Cacioppo, Christina Wallace, Courtney Boyd Myers, Dan Herman, David Rodriguez, David Tisch, Erin Tao, Fred Wilson, Jessica Lawrence, Joe Yveoli, Jordan Cooper, Kathryn Minshew, Katia Beauchamp , Katie Hunt, Kevin Prentiss, Kristine Kubat, LauraZapata, Lilia DeGregory, Marissa Evans, Marissa Wilson, Matt Kochman, Matt Shampine, Maya Bartz, Megan Filipp, Melanie Moore, Mimi Nguyen, Nate Westheimer, Nihal Mehta, Nikhil Kalghatgi, Phil Thomas Di Giulio, Phin Barnes, Quinten Farmer, Rachel Sklar, Rameet Chawla, Reece Pacheco, Roger Ehrenberg, Sarah Kunst, Scott Carleton, Summer Rayne Oakes, Will Peng
Hosting Committee
Adam Rothenberg, Alan Chen, Alex Kirshbaum, Alex Taub, Amanda Peyton, Andrew Chen, Ari Goldberg, Brooke Moreland, Carter Cleveland, Chris Paik, Chris Wiggins, Christinia Cacioppo, David Goldberg, Evan Korth, James Wahba, Jason Baptiste, Kristen Ming, Matt Shampine, Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Mimi N, Nikhil Kalghtgi, Rachel Sklar, Richard Blakely, Steven Rojas, Vin Vacanti, Will Peng, Yuli Ziv, Bianca Campued, Mallory Blair, Amy Jain, Daniella Y, Alex Kirshbaum, Jesse Kirshbaum, Josh Weinstein
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Most of all, we’d like to thank you, NYC, for helping us keep the kids off the street (Wall Street).
This post is written by 2011 hackNY Fellow Abe Stanway of Rutgers
The hackathon is not a new concept, but around NYC, it’s turning into a movement. These days, you can go to a different hackathon just about every weekend and build for the sake of building. Granted, many of the apps that get built at these hackathons are trivial, and they don’t solve “real” problems, but I think that’s missing the point. The developers who go to hackathons build more than just weekend hacks – they build community.
The dense community of developers and entrepreneurs has turned Silicon Valley into the hub of innovation that it is. But I see no reason why a strong developer community, and the innovation that comes with it, needs to be tied to a small strip of land in Southern California. Isn’t the point of the Internet to connect people who otherwise wouldn’t?
This is why we built Hacker League. We want to see more and more hackathons popping up. More and more mini-Valleys. The more hackathons there are, the more united the developer community will be, and a united developer community bodes well for the future of technology.
To that end, Hacker League is a tool for hackathon organizers. We want to make it easy for anyone thinking about throwing a hackathon to get up and do it. We provide everything you need to organize a fantastic hackathon: a wiki, a blog, a voting platform, a hack submission system, and hacker registration.
Hacker League is also for hackers. It’s a place to show off the great stuff you’ve built. A place to meet other skilled developers and get inspired. Each hacker on Hacker League gets a profile that lists his/her skills, interests, and past hacks. Each hack, in turn, has a page that lists who built it, what it’s built on, a screenshot, and of course, a link to the actual hack.
With Hacker League, we hope to give strength to the hackathon movement in New York, across America, and abroad. We’re still in beta, but we’re actively doing test runs. We ran the hackNY hackathon on October 1st, and it went over really well. If you’re planning on throwing a hackathon soon, we want to work with you to make your hackathon the best it can possibly be. Please don’t hesitate to reach out and email us at thehackerleague@gmail.com.
Major kudos to the winners of the hackNY fall 2011 student hackathon!
1st Place: MidiPHON
David Coss and Michael Bartnett, New York University
$600 plus tickets to Lean Startup Machine and Startup Weekend
2nd Place: AdRunner
Joey Dong (Rutgers) and Grant Kot (Julliard)
$400 plus tickets to Lean Startup Machine and Startup Weekend
3rd Place: LoCreep
Misha Ponizil (NYU), Randall Hunt (Western Carolina University), Andres Campanella (NYU), Paul Lee (University of Waterloo), Nabil Hassein (NYU), Tengchao Zhou (NYU)
$200
Most Schools: YPNHOI
Brandon Jackson (Yale University), Artur Sapek (Rhode Island School of Design), Eric Rafaloff (Baruch College), Alexandru Blidaru (University of Waterloo)
Best Solo Act: FourGuitar
David Hu (Columbia University)
Best Save: Topovize
Lucas Tan (Carnegie Mellon University), Kevin Bao (Carnegie Mellon University), Jacob Berlow (Pratt Institute), Louis de Valliere (Carnegie Mellon University), Daryl Yeo (Carnegie Mellon University), Jonathan Yee (Carnegie Mellon University)
Learn more about these and other awesome hacks on Hacker League!
hackNY hackathons give talented students an opportunity to meet each other, to find out about NYC’s great startup ecosystem, and to experience how hacking together a solution can be challenging, collaborative, and creative.
The schedule for the hackathon points to the final demo event where students, individually or in teams, present the creations they’ve built.
We couldn’t organize these events without the great support of a number of people, including our student organizing committee, our generous sponsors, the great talented students who participate, and of course our panel of expert judges who help us award prizes at the end of the hackathon.
We’d like to thank in advance the judges for the fall 2011 hackathon:
hackNY’s 10-week Summer Fellows Program includes a pedagogical lecture series designed to introduce Fellows to New York’s vibrant tech community.
Summer Series lectures featured a wide variety of speakers who introduced Fellows to the ins and outs of working for and founding a company. This year’s speakers included a mix of technologists, founders, journalists investors and designers.
June 1 – The first hackNY Summer Series lecture kicked off with Ann Miura-Ko, who has been called “the most powerful woman in startups” by Forbes.
June 7 – hackNY Fellows attended the June 2011 New York Tech Meetup, the largest public event during Internet Week.
June 8 – For the second installment of hackNY’s Summer Series, Elena Silenok, founder of Clothia.com discussed her transition from computer science researcher to Wall Street to startup founder.
June 14 - Joel Spolsky, co-founder of Fog Creek Software and Stack Overflow shared his academic experience and path to success during the third Summer Series lecture.
June 7 – hackNY Fellows attended the July 2011 New York Tech Meetup, whose theme was “The Now Neighborhood”
June 16 – Dan Guido, security consultant at iSEC Partners, spoke with hackNY Fellows about mobile application security.
June 20 – Josh Knowles, managing director of Pivotal Labs, NYC, discussed agile methodologies, pair programming and the shop’s philosophies.
June 21 – Howard Morgan spoke with hackNY Fellows about his varied experiences, from professor to investor and many accomplishments between.
June 27 – New York Times tech reporter Jenna Wortham gave tips on how to work with reporters to make sure your story gets told.
June 30 - User experience designer Whitney Hess shared her experiences and tips for building products with good UX.
July 7 - Christopher “moot” Poole talked with Fellows about starting 4chan and his latest startup, Canv.as
July 11 - Chris Dixon, Hunch.com founder and angel investor, spoke with Fellows about a variety of topics including his experience starting a company and seeking funding.
July 18 – Steven L. Baglio of Gunderson Dettmer, who represents many startups, including Christopher “moot” Poole’s Canvas, told Fellows about startups’ basic legal needs and things to look out for.
July 20 – Startup coach Jerry Colonna told Fellows about NYC’s startup ecosystem: then and now.
July 21 – Hilary Mason, hackNY cofounder and bit.ly’s chief scientist, discussed the impact and applications of “big data” in NYC startups.
July 25 -Union Square Ventures’ partners chatted with Fellows about the present and future states of NYC’s startup ecosystem.
July 27 – SecondMarket’s Barry Silbert spoke with Fellows about the history of his company and how US markets are changing.
This guest post is from class of 2010 hackNY Fellow Tal Safran
This weekend, I hacked (and won) at the foursquare global hackathon with my good friend Max Stoller. Our hack, “how ______ are you,” takes your foursquare checkins and crosses them with publicly available census data to give you demographic information about the places you go to.
winning
For example, it told me that I’m “62% single” since among the places I go to, 62% of the population is single. In NYC, the Meatpacking District is the most single (77%) while Soho is the least single (57%). Our hack won and now we’re competing for the global title — a championship belt.
It’s always a blast hacking with Max, and this is the fourth hack we’ve built together. We actually became good friends at the first hackNY hackathon, after using the Aviary API to add mustaches to people. We also did the hackNY Fellows program together, which was an unforgettable experience.
We dedicate this hack to hackNY, keeping the kids off the street.
hackNY’s 2011 Summer Fellows Program concluded with the DemoFest on July 28th, but several Fellows were still around working on independent projects and attended the August 2nd New York Tech Meetup.
Although this month’s NYTM didn’t have an official theme, some of the startups presenting had some similarities. There were personalization engines such as Brom.ly – an event activity recommender, and Dibsie – a shopping site that recommends deals based on your preferences and on-site activity.
There were also social tools like want! – a mobile app that lets you share photos of things you spot in real life you’d like to own, and KnowAboutIt – a service that highlights the most personally relevant content shared in your social streams. Voyurl privately tracks your web usage, offering recommendations and showcasing unique and insightful data about your own browsing habits through a variety of interactive charts. Apparently the founder, Adam Leibsohn, went homeless to finish building the product.
StockTouch brings slick stock visualization to the iPad, and Zaarly lets anyone post what they want and how much they’ll pay for it, allowing those affected by the data presented by StockTouch to quickly earn a few bucks.
Finally, two apps that emerged from personal needs were also demoed: A productivity tool called Idea Flight syncs presentations across a roomful of devices, and 110 Stories, which shows pencil sketches of the Twin Towers where they used to be via augmented reality, emerged out of Brian August’s self-described obsession with the buildings.
In this post 2011 hackNY Fellow Sameen Jalal describes the hackNY Summer Series lecture by Barry Silbert.
On July 27th, Barry Silbert, the founder and CEO of Second Market, spoke to us. Silbert was a previous investment banker at Houlihan Lokey and a graduate of the Goizueta Business School of Emory University.
All the hackNY fellows are technically strong but not many of us had business expertise, well at least I didn’t. As Silbert got into the nitty gritty details of the business world, I found myself engaged with not only keep up with the terminology but with how much I was learning!
He told us about the humble beginnings of the now not-so-small company; Going from start-up to successful company in such harsh times made an incredible story. The most valuable part of the experience was the new perspective I gained and the motivation I received to create my own story. I am definitely inspired to further delve into the start-up world!
