The #ATTWNY Civic App Challenge came to a close today with the announcement of the 3 winners.
To recap The AT&T Western New York Civic App Challenge is a two month virtual hackathon for WNY's most talented computer scientists, software developers and hardware engineers to build products that have the potential to benefit the local community. Over 30 applications were submitted and for the record the most so far across New York State!
To learn more about this Hackathon, Go to http://attwny.hackupstate.com
The announcement was held at DIG BUFFALO and all the judges and community partners that helped make this possible were present.
Jessica Edwards, DIG's Curator opened the ceremony and she explained that all App Challenge participants had free access to DIG for the 2 months to collaborate and work on their projects which was great!
Neil Giacobbi from AT&T thanked all the participants, judges and community partners. As one of the Community Partners (InfoTech Niagara) I cannot tell you how great it is to have worked with Neil and his AT&T partner, Ben Roberts. Highly professional and hard working guys that were on top of everything from start to finish! Thank you!!!
NYS Assemblyman Sean Ryan said he enjoyed the judging and was impressed with the amount of great submissions. On top of congratulating the winners, he said Buffalo was the real winner as it proved that Buffalo was moving forward and in the right direction. I got a chance to speak with him afterward and he is very happy about the direction Buffalo is moving in!
Of course Dan Magnuszewski of Z80 Labs was a huge part in getting the word out, connecting programmers and developers to the contest and even working on giving advice and help to contestants. He also was the one who asked AT&T to get InfoTech involved in being a community partner! Thank you Dan!!!
Martin Casstevens of SUNY at Buffalo(along with several others from different parts of the School) spoke highly of the quality of the apps presented. Martin served as a judge as well! Thank you Martin!
President and CEO of United Way of Buffalo and Erie County Michael Weiner spoke on how the challenge fit the United Way's vision for Buffalo and WNY and that there are many great apps still out there that could help WNY. Thank you Michael for your support and for being a judge!
Marnie LaVigne of LaunchNY another great judge and committed individual to Startups and the community. Marnie spoke about the quality of apps and how difficult it was to choose the best as the submissions were very good. She also spoke highly of the collaboration that happened through the challenge and she gave kudos to all that made it happen! Thank you Marnie!!!
Our very own Pat Finucane Treasurer of InfoTech spoke on how grateful ITN was to be chosen as a community partner.
And now to the winners!
3rd place and $3000 went to Rentegrity! I have linked to their project page on Hacker League's page for more details.
2nd place and $5000 went to WNY Thruway Guide!!
And our winner of the competition and $10,000 went to WNY Family Connection!!
Again, I feel privileged and honored to be a part of InfoTech and to represent the Technology community and I think this time we did something great for our WNY Community and cemented partnerships for a long time to come!
Partners Included the following great groups!
- AT&T
- Z80 Labs
- University of Buffalo Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership
- UB Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences
- UB Office of Science, Technology, Transfer, and Economic Outreach
- United Way of Buffalo & Erie County
- State University of New York at Fredonia
- InfoTech Niagara
- LaunchNY
- Hack Upstate
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