HackMatch

One of the principal goals of the hackNY initiative is to pair as many NYC student-hackers as possible with the tech startups in the growing NYC startup ecosystem. We had over 100 students apply to be interns and over 70 startups apply to host them. Thanks to The Kauffman Foundation, were able to fund twelve students as the 2010 hackNY Fellows, who we personally matched with their host startups, but given the large number of applicants, this approach clearly won't scale. To help with this we wrote HackMatch to help students and startups identify the best matches based on technological skills and needs.HackMatch provides for each startup a ranked list of students whose skillset most overlaps with their needs (and conversely for each student). HackMatch is written in python and available FOSS via http://github.com/hackNY/hackmatch, and received an "honorable mention" for its debut at the TechCrunch Distrupt Open Hack Day May 23. Try it out!HackMatch results were sent on June 2 2010 to students and startups who applied for the internship program. If you applied but didn't receive results, and would like to be HackMatched, please email internship@hackNY.org.We include below a FAQ about HackMatch:Any key reasons why we couldn't find a Fellow match? How did selection of the Fellows work?

First we looked through the over >100 applicants and selected a cohort of approx 30 'finalists' that we thought looked like the promising interns;then we ran hackmatch to identify startups that had technology needs which overlapped with the technology abilities of the students; andthen we manually read over the top-matching startups and made sure that they had "a mentoring environment" (a person to talk to the student-intern-hacker, a project for her or him, and a space to put her or him).In short, there isn't a specific reason for any one startup not being matched with a Fellow other than it didn't survive the above culling process.

Were there more start-ups than the 100+ summer applicants?

There were >70 startups applying, but more students than startups.

What can I expect from HackMatch?

From hackmatch you can expect a list of students who:

• have consented to have their email addresses released and who
• are at the top of the list for matching with your stated needs

How many students are on the list?

The email asking them to consent to give out their emails went out May 22. So far (as of May 26), >20 have replied with consent, with more rolling in all the time

Are these students who didn't apply for hackNY?

No, they all applied to be 2010 hackNY Fellows

Is HackMatch your hackathon product?

HackMatch debuted at the TechCrunch Distrupt Hack Day but is FOSS. Try it out! http://github.com/hackNY/hackmatch

If you have any other questions, comments, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to let us know.