Hackathon Where Wearables and Gaming Come Together

Photo of Alex Donn: AT&T Mobility

While writing my previous post about the 2014 AT&T Developer Summit, I located my notes from the AT&T | SIC Mobile App Hackathon - Wearables event that I attended on October 26-27, 2013 in Seattle, Wash. Focused on wearables and gaming apps, I attended this event to learn what great ideas people are generating that can help live a healthier lifestyle or overcome physical or mental ailments. Many of the apps produced complement the mHealth app that my colleagues and I are developing that provides health and wellness information to people with mobile devices in emerging economies. While Alex Donn, Developer Evangelist at AT&T Mobility, wrote a summary of the event on the AT&T Developer Blog, there are a couple of items worth mentioning in this post.

18 teams presented during the hackathon, which produced five finalists that made subsequent presentations for prizes at the Seattle Interactive Conference on October 29, 2013. While not among the top three winners, I was impressed with the SmartChair, which allows a user to monitor the time he or has is sitting and notifies the user when it is time to take a break. Too many people, myself included, spend long hours sitting at a desk for long periods of time. We get focused on completing our tasks and fail to take breaks that are good for mental and physical well being. A device like SmartChair will result in a healthier working environment, which will produce fewer health issues and a reduction of medical costs.

I also appreciated the app produced by GoalPhysics that provides "breakthrough performance through big data, not drugs." Winning third third place overall, this app collects large amounts of data from athletes wearing apparel with integrated sensors. Not only does this app provide a competitive edge for professional athletes where hundredths of a second could separate a winner from a tenth place finisher, but the recreational athlete may benefit from collecting large amounts of their performance data, in real-time, during exercise routines to learn areas of strengths and weaknesses.

A video of the presentations of the five finalists may be viewed through this link or the video embedded below (GoalPhysics is the first presenting team):



Aaron Rose is an advisor to talented entrepreneurs and co-founder of great companies. He also serves as the editor of Solutions for a Sustainable World.