On a recent, wintery Saturday in Ithaca, NY, a group of socially-minded programmers, designers, entrepreneurs, and community activists got together for the first-ever Singlebrook Holiday Hackathon.

We were lucky to have such a well-rounded, talented group in attendance! The event was technology agnostic, with the only guideline being that the contributions to the Hackathon be made in the spirit of "Code with Love".

The morning started with bagels, coffee and one-minute idea pitches. Teams formed, with everyone using post-its to indicate their skill set and which projects they wanted to join, and everyone got to work. Strategizing around the problem, customer, and solution for the projects took up a good part of the morning and sparked an interesting dialog around social issues that our community is faced with. 

It was great to get the input of Janet Cotraccia, Program Officer with the Community Foundation of Tompkins County. Cotraccia is an expert on the challenges that local non-profit organizations face. Others in attendance had key insights around issue areas like community resource sharing and alternative economies. 

By lunchtime, everyone was full-steam-ahead coding on their projects, and the groups stayed very engaged throughout the afternoon. Before the final presentations, judging, and awarding of prizes, we chatted about the projects over pizza. 

A few of us got to demo a video game, built by Singlebrook Senior Web Developer Jared Beck and team, called Disco Space Shooter. It was fun (and challenging to the novice gamer like myself)! I enjoyed Jared's concise explanations of the concepts behind how the game was built, and his team commented too about Jared's ability to really explain the work that they were doing to build the game. 

As teams were putting the final touches on their projects, everyone gathered in anticipation for the final pitches and show-and-tell. A highlight was watching the young Miller-Outs (Chiara, age 7 and Louisa, age 10) give their pitches and show progress on their Scratch apps, "Dress the Girl" and "Tiny Cat Friend", respectively. 

Votes were cast for each of our top two favorite projects, as well as votes for "Best Tech" and "Best Design". Here's a quick summary of the winning teams' projects:

Grand Prize: "My Green Home", Peter Krakow and Michael Miles. An online green homes tour and social sharing platform for people interested in greening their homes. My Green Home received a $250 grant from the Community Foundation of Tompkins County, which will be awarded to Krakow and Miles's chosen charity, Friendship Donations Network (FDN). According to their website, "FDN aims to redistribute fresh, nutritious food that would otherwise be thrown away from stores and farms to neighbors in need". My Green Home also took the award for "Best Design", an original artwork by artist, Kadie Salfi. 

1st Runner-up: "Happinefs", Scott Morris and team. An app that lets people take stock of their goals and means and helps them find ways to achieve those goals with the means they have, utilizing alternative economies. This group had a very lively discussion leading up to the implementation of their project. The application was written in PHP using Symfony2. 

2nd Runner-up: "Swappr", Alex Colket and team. A mobile app built in Ruby on Rails that creates an easy way to swap your unwanted items with others' online. Swappr also took the award for "Best Tech", a gift card donated by Taitem Engineering. 

The Hackathon ended with a fun closing party where everyone had a chance to socialize and enjoy some local wine or beer. 

We couldn't have done it without the support of our generous event sponsors, many of whom are mentioned and linked above. Other sponsors include: Metis Consulting Group, Ithacash, and Emmy's Organics, Pizza Aroma, Ithaca Beer Company, and Red Feet Wine Market and Spirit Provisions. We would also like to give a big shout-out to the talented photographer and designer Tyler Finck for taking photos at the Hackathon. All of the photos above, except for the final winners' photo, are credited to Tyler Finck. See more photos and read his blog post here.