#hackthebear

Saturday afternoon, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich (aka "BK") visited Cal Hacks with his daughters. They came by the Intel Mashery table, met our team, and I showed them awesome apps built by developers using Intel XDK.

The 36-hour Cal Hacks collegiate hackathon took place at UC Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium last weekend. Students from UCLA, Stanford, Harvard, UDub and more made the journey to Cal, some by plane and others by bus.  Intel CEO, Brian Krzanich attended as well.  Over a thousand developers participated with close to 200 completed projects.  Participants took up four stadium floors and others hacked outdoors.

Intel’s Platform Evangelist and Edison hardware specialist Steven Xing joined me in setting up our Intel Mashery sponsor table fully equipped with Intel hardware.  We brought the new Intel Edison boards for participants interested in hardware hacking. 

I later journeyed outside the stadium where hundreds of developers waited in line for the event to start.  I made new friends and handed out Intel Mashery swag.

Cal Hacks' Director, Alex Kern kicked off the event in the late evening.

During the opening ceremonies, I was greeted by many familiar faces including fellow evangelists Justin Woo from Paypal and Sendgrid’s Nick Quinlan who also emceed the event. 

The outdoor stage setup for API demos was amazing.  I faced the Cal Hacks crowd with the backdrop of a dark sky filled with stars.  The prize for the Best App Using the the Mashery API Network: up to (3) Rolling Spider Parrot MiniDrones and up to (5) Basis watches.

Developers visited our Intel Mashery table on the second floor seeking Mashery API Network, Intel Edison, and XDK app builder support.  Some even created a social space right along side our table chatting about development, school, and just having fun. I set up on the spot races challenging developers to create a mobile app with Intel XDK using the Mashery API Network, and the majority of participants accomplished this feet in just minutes.

On Saturday, Mashery’s Vivek Chopra, George Perry, and Bob Pielock joined Steven and I providing Intel Edison and Mashery support.  This trio won the TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon in San Francisco with their “Shower With Friends” water consumption app using the Intel Galileo board.

Check out BK’s #hackthebear tweet in support of the hackathon community.

Teams demoed their projects on Sunday including “Nextile Shurt” built by HackGT Director "Pav" and his team.  They used two Intel Edison boards connected to a team member's back displaying real time motion data through a connected web app.

The winner of the Mashery prize was awarded to a three member team that created “Tomato."  This app is a robust voice command interface for the web which uses the APIs: SportsData, USA TODAY, and Rotten Tomatoes.

Two finalist teams used Intel Mashery technologies including “Kontroll” built with the Edison and Myo allowing users control over connected devices by way of hand gestures, and the Rotten Tomatoes API was used in "Movie Hoppr," the movie viewer management app.

Thanks goes to Alex Kern, Eva Zheng and the entire Cal Hacks team for organizing this outstanding event.