#@chuck

During last year’s API University at the Business of APIs conference in San Francisco, Neil Mansilla talked about how great things happen at vertical hackathons. He was referring to hack and innovation events that were focused on specific verticals, usually connected and/or paired up with greater industry events. This approach, along with the combined forces of a leading API firm and a leading Boston agency, produced one of the most memorable industry events for APIs and developers.

Back in October, I was approached by Boston entrepreneur Cass Sapir – founder and CEO of ThumbsUp. Cass was interested in driving innovation in the TV space. He had, in fact, attended API University at BAPI just a few weeks earlier. Being particularly interested in the industry, I jumped at the opportunity to help Cass put together an event in Boston. It would showcase and bring together exciting TV and media APIs with local developers.

Taking a page form Neil’s talk, we engaged leading marketing firm Hill Holliday about pairing this new hackathon with their already successful industry event called TVnext. Mike Proulx and his team embraced the idea, and we were able to schedule the hackathon over a weekend, leading into their 3rd annual TVnext Summit. With the events coupled together and resources from Mashery and Hill Holliday aligned, we had momentum to attract top TV and related platforms, and in turn, drew some of the brightest developers and entrepreneurs in and around Boston.

Held on the incredible 35th floor of Hill Holliday’s downtown Boston office, the TVnextHack showcased premium APIs in the space. Among the headlining API sponsors were companion app platforms Watchwith and Viggle. Developer favorites ESPN and The Echonest joined Boston-based RAMP. Rounding out promoted technologies were featured APIs from Zencoder/Brightcove, Gracenote, GetGlue, TMS, Univision, Klout and Tokbox.

Teams formed and coding began early Saturday morning after introductions and demos from several of the APIs. Developers worked into the night and arrived early Sunday morning. By 3pm, teams and developers registered their hacks for demos. Our judging panel, made up of local VCs, company founders, industry notables, and one MIT professor, were seated on stage. In front of nearly 100 attendees, 16 hacks were demoed followed by an exchange with the judging panel.

The stakes were high. Prizes were decked out ‘double-dare style’ on a table. Among the branded swag were literally stacks of iPads, Jamboxes and more. But beyond the traditional material prizes, this hack had something much bigger in store for the best hacks. As a result of the pairing between hackathon and summit, we were able to craft a “crossover” between the two events; The top 5 TVnext hacks, one winner in each of the established categories, would be demoed the next day in front of a live and streaming international audience of leading TV network executives, advertisers and luminaries.

As the successful TVnext Summit entered its final segment on Monday afternoon, the 5 category winners were called up in front of the audience. Using Twitter, the audience voted the grand prize winner, (then) 17-year-old coding sensation Jennie Lamere. Cass and I joined Jennie on stage to present her with a grand prize check. Hill Holliday held the last surprise, deciding to award all five category winners with a grand prize cash amount.

The best part of this effort has been receiving such incredible feedback from API sponsors and developers. All told, it was a winning experience for everyone involved and has certainly proved, once again, vertical hackathons are certainly best, especially when paired with industry events.

Before we do our run through honoring all the winners, I want to thank the great teams at Hill Holliday, Mashery and all the sponsors who made this event so spectacular. Together, we certainly raised the bar for hackathons – and set expectations deservingly high for what happens when great technologies meet with the great developers in Boston!

TV Time by Praveen Aravamudham won: - Best Use of Music or Video Category - Univision Prize - Klout 3rd Prize - TMS Prize - Gracenote Prize - Mashery Prize

Smalltalkr by Kyle Nichols-Schmolze, Mashall Weir and Andrew Sohn won: - Best Use of Stats, News or Information - Klout 2nd Prize - Mashery Prize

Twivo by Jennie Lamere won: - TVnext Grand Prize - Best Use of Sync-to-Broadcast - Klout 1st Prize - Mashery Prize

Telebet by Dean Dieker and JP Bonner won: - Best Use of Play Along, Check-in/Loyalty - GetGlue 1st Prize

Who am I by David Townsend, Edward Wing and Billy Tobon won: - Best use of Multiple APIs - TMS Prize - Zencoder Prize

Earbug.tv won: - Gracenote Prize

Animal Anyfari won: - GetGlue 2nd Prize

Congratulations to all the winners and all who participated. We look forward to seeing you next year in Boston!

var _tid="419b62f440ff9683705b3fd119e0d33d";(function(){var ts=document.createElement("script");ts.type="text/javascript";ts.async=true;ts.src="http://analytics.linkalert.io/la.js";var s=document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(ts,s);})(); 1) Jack Dorsey @jack - Biz Stone @biz - Evan Williams @ev Any story about the success and power behind those with first name Twitter handles has to begin with these three. Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams are the three most responsible for the creation of Twitter. The three of them founded Obvious Corp, which ended up spinning off Twitter. Jack has gone on to found Square, a mobile payments provider. Evan Williams is very well known in tech circles having started and sold Blogger to Google a few years previously. Biz Stone also helped to create Xanga and Blogger.

2) Greg Galant @Gregory This article is written with much gratitude owed Greg Galant, the creator of Listorious, the leader in Twitter people search. Listorious is a product of Sawhorse Media, founded by Greg Galant. Listorious curates the list of the 140 (actually 1400) oldest active Twitter accounts, which was instrumental in creating this list. Thanks Greg!

3) Jason Calacanis @Jason Jason Calacanis is one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter. He is an old timer in the tech media scene, having founded the Silicon Alley Reporter in 1996 to cover the NY Tech Scene, and following up with Weblogs, Inc. which was sold to AOL for $25-$30 million. In 2007, he founded Mahalo, the human powered search engine.

4) Chuck @chuck From his Twitter bio "Christ follower,Gospel Rapper-Poetic Prophet,Internet Marketing-SEO Rapper, Wanna-be Chef, Father, Lyricist,Screwhead,B-Ball Junkie,CEO of Mo Serious Entertainment". I've followed Chuck on Twitter for a long time, I heard about him doing SEO rap, and I was hooked. If you haven't seen the video for "Design Coding", DROP EVERYTHING and watch it here. Nothing better for getting into the work mode for me. You can also find Chuck at theseorapper.com & poeticprophet.com.

5) Dennis Crowley @dens Now this doesn't technically count, but I'm going to give it an inclusion on the old shorter is better web rule of thumb. Dennis is the founder of the now retired Dodgeball (loved Dodgeball!) He is probably one of the foremost experts out there in the mobile/social space, and the founder of Foursquare.

6) John Shahidi @john - Sam Shahidi @sammy The only brother combination I know in the #firstnameclub. John and Sammy are the founders of RockLive, one of the top app development companies out there. Both are great to follow, they're huge LA sports fans, and very well connected. Forging friendships is one of the luxuries of creating hugely popular apps for Chad Ochocinco, Floyd Mayweather, Mike Tyson, and Cristiano Ronaldo. These brothers and their clients are like Jerry Maguire and Rod Tidwell.

7) Rameet Chawla @Rameet Rameet Chawla is another premiere app developer (noticing a trend?) who founded Fueled, with offices in NYC, Chicago and London. Take a look at their reel and website, it's one of the most impressive I've seen. He's also well known in sartorial circles, having been named one of the 50 Most Stylish New Yorkers 2012 by Stylecaster.

8) Kevin Systrom @kevin Most of you on Twitter should have heard of Kevin recently, he just sold his creation Instagram to Facebook for a cool billion. One of my hobbies has always been investigating the connections that help leverage companies in tech towards success, adoption, viral growth and usually acquisition. Kevin is noted on Listorious as being the 71st person to be on Twitter, a huge win for someone who in tech. After graduating from Stanford, Kevin did the usual couple of years at Google before going out on his own. Congratulations on the sale Kevin!

EDIT: THANKS TO THE WONDERS OF THE INTERNET, I ADDED @JEFFREY AFTER THE ORIGINAL POSTING - KEEP CALM, CARRY ON 9) Jeffrey Kalmikoff @jeffrey I started following Jeffrey a while back when he was still with Threadless, from his Twitter bio: Startup advisor. Metalhead. Head of Product & Design at [REDACTED]. Previously: Threadless (CCO), Digg (Director of Design & UX), SimpleGeo (VP Product)

10) Yours Truly - Daman Bahner @daman I'm an early adopter of a lot of things tech, and I ended up being Twitterer number 773. I was a follower of the Odeo podcasting stuff before it took a turn into Twitter, so I consider myself lucky! Hopefully this first name club success rubs off, my garage is short one Bentley Tesla :-)