Our Hackaday #WorldCreateDay hackathon kicked off Saturday at 9:00 AM, with both members and visitors participating. After some introductions and negotiations around forming teams, our contestants picked their challenge problems and started to work. We also had several drop-ins, both teams and individuals, that brought in their own projects to hack on throughout the day. We had a group come in for a tour at 11:00 and joined the hackathon contestants for a great lunch sponsored by Mexico City cuisine catering Service. By the afternoon, our contestants were well underway with their projects and were doing some initial prototyping to validate their ideas. As the competition approached the judging time, they raced to post them on the hackaday.io website. We had several visitors join us for the final presentations and judging.

It turned out to be a very close competition between our top three finalists – all had great ideas with high potential:
Genesis Adams – Glow Beam
Joseph Broderick – Wifi Digital Hydrometer
Dusty Klein - CHEWS: Calendar & Health Emergency Warning System

Our final winner was Dusty Klein, whose project has the opportunity to reach a broad range of people. All three contestants plan to continue development of their projects, and enter them into upcoming competitions that are all part of the 2017 Hackaday Prize. They also plan to collaborate on some of the technologies that are in common between the projects – that’s the true hacker collaborative spirit! At the end of the competition, the entire crew headed over to our other sponsor, Latitude 33 Brewing to continue the collaboration as new friends.

Be sure to follow and like their projects on hackaday.io. If you don’t have a free account, sign up today.

We also plan to host hackathons for the remaining four rounds of the 2017 Hackaday Prize – more chances for you to win cash prizes for your project!