Over 160 of South Florida’s most elite software designers and engineers gathered along with participants from Argentina, Chile and Colombia at the University of Miami Life Science & Technology Park in downtown Miami for the 2012 AT&T Mobile App Hackathon. Competitors had 48 hours to concept, design, code, and present their idea to judges from local tech startups – in hopes of taking home over $5,000 dollars in prizes. The Miami Herald did a great write up here: The future is now at Miami AT&T Mobile App Hackathon.
My team created an app called Crystalize, which ended up taking home the silver medal. Crystalize is an idea catalyst: it makes good ideas great, and makes great ideas happen. It’s an iPhone app that helps you catalog your ideas and distill them down to make them successful. It’s for people with ideas: inventors, entrepreneurs, students, and daydreamers. It asks you a series of questions to help you develop and validate each idea. When you’re done, it compiles a professional PDF executive summary to print or email. For a fee, you can confidentially submit the idea for review by a business mentor.
Our team was one of the smallest in the competition and consisted of myself (Justin Kent), my wife (Ali Kent / Alejandra Santamaria), and our friend & colleague Serdar Karatekin. We did all of the design, UX, and engineering over the course of the weekend. The idea originally came out of my presentations: I talk about all this cool technology stuff, but the question I get asked most is “I have an idea. How do I make it happen?” The Crystalize process is the best start on making an idea happen, and it’s what I teach in all of my talks.
The app will be out in iTunes soon, so look for another post then. Thanks to all the judges, mentors, and organizers who devoted their time to make the Hackathon such a great event.
