The Silicon Valley Google Technology
User Group (GTUG) held the first GTUG Campout, a 46 hour hackathon, over the weekend
of August 7-9. Nearly 200 developers, designers, and business people came to build working
applications using Google Technology, focusing largely on the Google Wave
API.
The event was
intense, spanning 3 days. In that time, attendees had to pitch ideas, form teams, and code
like heck to have a working prototype to demo by Sunday evening.
Friday
evening, we had over 50 pitches. Afterwards, people had a chance to mingle and find teams
that they wanted to work with. Groups whiteboarded and discussed their ideas, then started
working hard. Over 30 coders were still working past 2:00 am Saturday morning.
Sunday
night we had 32 presentations of working applications followed by
wooden nickel style voting to determine the winner. The crowd chose Videowave, a Wave gadget
that allows synchronized viewing of videos from YouTube. They were awarded 1 pass to Google
I/O '10, 2 G1 phones, and lunch with members of the Wave team.
Screenshot of Videowave in
action
The list of winners:
1st place: Videowave, by Solomon Wu, Aaron Tong,
Nelson To. (their blog)
PoppyWave, by Hitesh Parashar, Van
Riper, Kewaljit, David Elliston, Dave Lyman, Prathap Nimal, Dave Neubaur, Toby Morning,
Perrine Crampton
Wave-Email Gateway that lets non-Wave users to
participate in Wave.
Robot:
poppywave@appspot.com
BeerTime Bot, by Jason
Katzer, Aaditiya Bhatia, Joe Mulvaney
Measures hostility level
in a Wave. If too high, hijacks thread and geolocates participants and suggests nearby
drinking establishment. Robot and gadget components.
Congratulations to all the winners
and other attendees who worked so hard! Thanks also to the Googlers who helped out and
answered questions, and our volunteers, especially those that helped with videos and photos.
A fun slideshow of the
event:
The Silicon Valley
Google Technology User Group is one of the first GTUGs around the world. Today
around 70 GTUGs exist worldwide. Information about starting a GTUG in your area can be found
at http://www.gtugs.org. The
first GTUG Campout was a great success and we are looking forward to doing the event next
year, and hope other GTUGs will host GTUG Campouts in their neighborhoods.
Update: Video and some images courtesy of Shirley
Lin of WooMeOver.
By Kevin Nilson, co-leader of the Silicon Valley Google Technology
User Group
The Silicon Valley Google Technology
User Group (GTUG) held the first GTUG Campout, a 46 hour hackathon, over the weekend
of August 7-9. Nearly 200 developers, designers, and business people came to build working
applications using Google Technology, focusing largely on the Google Wave
API.
The event was
intense, spanning 3 days. In that time, attendees had to pitch ideas, form teams, and code
like heck to have a working prototype to demo by Sunday evening.
