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September 27, 2012

Mobile App Hackathon Winners Announced by AT&T and Ericsson

AT&T, a major provider of wireless, Wi-Fi, high-speed Internet, voice and cloud-based services, joined with Ericsson, the world's leading provider of communications technology and hosted an AT&T Mobile App Hackathon on Sept.22-23 in New York.

The 36-Hour App Development Competition was held in conjunction with the Social Good Summit.

AT&T and Ericsson aim at creating a better world by focusing on the power of technology. Hackathons bring hackers or developers together for a competitive marathon development session. Developers team up to create new, innovative and useful mobile applications and the teams compete against each other for a prize.

In the New York Hackathon, 21 teams competed in the 36-hour competition. More than 120 attendees were there and they created 21 mobile apps that offered solutions to social challenges.

AT&T’s overall innovation strategy aims to accelerate technology development by collaborating with technology providers, third-party developers and venture capitalists. It has always been at the forefront, sometimes by contributing expertise, connection and resources, and other times by taking the lead on projects to execute ideas and bring them into existence.

In their marathon session, developers tried to solve local and global issues with the help of their apps. There were great ideas that dealt with the social problems and global needs, from substance abuse to disaster response to feeding the hungry. The winning apps brought a sleek user experience and best technical execution to resolve the issue they addressed.

The overall winner was ‘DecisionMakr,’ an app that allowed Twitter users to give real-time quantitative and qualitative feedback to the decision makers at town halls, conferences and other public events. The app ‘Addic-aid’ was second in place.


Image via Shutterstock

It has an easy meeting finder for problem drinkers and a semi-anonymous support network to help the addicts.

In third place was an app named ‘Hope,’ allowing charities and food donors to move quickly, reach the needy soon and enable easy exchange of communication in real time as to how much and what type of supplies they currently have – and convey specifically the supplies they need.

Elaine Weidman-Grunewald, Ericsson’s vice president of Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility, said the New York Hackathon was an excellent example of Technology for Good in action, bringing creativity and urgency to create a positive force for change. Since one of their major goals during this year's Social Good Summit was to bring improved access to secondary education for girls, they specifically challenged the developers on that theme.

Elaine went on to add that they hoped that the results will offer new solutions to the education challenge.

John Donovan, AT&T senior executive vice president of Technology and Network Operations, said technology and innovation have the power to transform our world and make it a better place to live. They bring us together as a global community and create solutions to our most challenging problems. AT&T is committed to empowering developers with resources like an open network, API platform and events like the Hackathon at the Social Good Summit so that we can continuously fuel the creation of new ideas that make communities stronger.

The AT&T Developer Program is the longest running carrier developer program, rated as the best by Evans Data Corporation for the past six years. This program was born from the company’s commitment to innovation and third-party development.

AT&T operates three Foundry locations in Tel Aviv, Plano and Palo Alto to encourage developer interaction and innovation.

Want to learn more about today’s powerful mobile ecosystem? Don't miss the Mobility Tech Conference & Expo, collocated with ITEXPO Austin 2012 taking place Oct. 2-5 2012, in Austin, TX. Stay in touch with everything happening at Mobility Tech Conference & Expo. Follow us on Twitter.




Edited by Braden Becker


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