It is 11pm and one hour ago the first ever crowdsourcing hackathon, CrowdHack, came to a close with around 10 teams demoing their entries. Some very cool stuff!
Here are some highlights:
- crowdsourced barometer readings via app installed on mobile phones to collect barometric pressure data and predict the weather better than it has ever been possible
- submit a photo of your mole and the crowd will advise you if you may have melanoma based on 5 key indicators
- cloud workers in India being commissioned to leave their computer to clean up a street or park and submitting before and after photos
- twilio robot calling restaurants to collect enhanced business listing data like if they take reservations, have vegetarian dishes on the menu
- a python module to real-time ask a human any question from your code
- sorting algorithm with the comparator being humans deciding what they like
- have the crowd choose a color scheme based on a theme/idea
Now the crowds are continuing to work through the night and the final judging will take place at 10am tomorrow and awards given out on stage at the CrowdConf reception at 5pm. With about 35 developers showing up for the 12 hour event to collaborate, learn and hack some neat things we are happy to see CrowdConf get kicked off with people getting their hands dirty and doing some actual crowdsourcing. Developers are finding great ways to solve problems every day and using crowdsourcing is a super powerful way to accomplish some big things that could never be possible otherwise.
We will soon post more info on the winners with some photos, perhaps video of their presentations and even links to some of the apps that are live on the web.
Big thanks goes out to Twilio, GitHub and CrowdFlower for joining us in sponsoring and making the first ever crowdsourcing hackathon happen.
