Productivity app wins AngelHack Dubai 2015
Bring your laptops, hardware, creativity, perseverance and
create. (Images via AngelHack Dubai 2015)
More than 70 hackers, coders and builders worked around the
clock to build working prototypes of their projects at the
Microsoft campus in Dubai Internet City last week.
The event was AngelHack Dubai
2015 and they were given just 60 seconds to pitch their ideas
and recruit team members.
“It’s a startup scenario,” said Sameer Sortur, UAE ambassador
for AngelHack. “But where other scenarios like Startup Weekend
focus on a business idea – how it’s going to make money – we focus
on the technology aspect.”
The emphasis was on substance rather than promises.
“We don’t look at a Powerpoint presentation at all,” Sortur
said. “We disqualify people who try to show a Powerpoint
presentation. We want to see something tangible.”
As such, participants needed to build working prototypes with
whatever tools were available, be they HTML 5, Java, MongoDB and
any pieces of hardware participants brought in.
So much to do in just 24 hours.
Judging was substantive too.
“We want to see something tangible,” Sortur continued. “We want
to see coding. Judges and mentors check lines of code. It is very
rigorous.”
And the winner…
The team behind the mobile phone app Wrappup took the top prize
and a trip to Silicon Valley and one week of mentorship.
“They won because their ideas were very interesting. They built
a working prototype in 24 hours,” Sortur said. “Wrappup uses audio
technology to capture the notes of the meeting. The audio is
captured through the Wrappup app on your phone. After the meeting
is finished it does an audio analysis of the important tasks,
allocates action items and sends out the action items list to
individuals present at the meetings, and it blocks their
calendar.”
Wrappup’s team was able to build a working prototype in 24
hours, and that it performed well when judges tested it.
“Accuracy and quality of information will come over time (as the
product is refined), Sortur said, and added Wrappup had an accuracy
rate of 90 percent when judges tested it.
Other cool projects
This could become something big.
The team behind Alive, a heart-monitoring smart watch app
that integrates with a smart phone and leverages big data, took
second place.
“These guys built a fantastic prototype,” Sortur said. “If you
suffer cardiac arrest with watch on wrist and phone in pocket, it
triggers alerts to people around you who are CPR-trained.”
The team behind Alive will also get two tickets to Singapore’s
travel tech conference Web in Travel in October.
Air Intelligent, a concept that should be familiar to any
science fiction fans, was awarded third place. The project
uses face detection and NFC technology to expedite the check-in
process at airports.
“When you enter the airport, it automatically identifies you,
and without any barrier you get to the gate,” Sortur said.
And to make airport transit even more efficient, travelers who
use the Air Intelligent system can be fast-tracked through the
pilot and crew lines, which are utilized just 10 percent of the
time, he added.
He noted that the team behind Air Intelligent were internet
security officials for Dubai Airports.
Those who missed AngelHack Dubai will get another opportunity to
build those projects they’ve been thinking about later this year,
when AngelHack visits Abu Dhabi. That date is being finalized, and
should be announced soon.
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