Attensity Ups Its Presence in Hackathons
October 28, 2014
I found the Attensity blog post “Attensity Takes Utah Tech Week” quite interesting. I cannot recall when mainstream content processing companies embraced hackathons so fiercely.
The blog post explains:
A hackathon, for the uninitiated, is exactly what it sounds like: a hybrid of computer hacking and a marathon in a grueling, caffeine-fueled, 12-hour time period. Groups comprised of mostly engineers and IT whizzes compete against the clock and other teams to create a project to present at the of the day to a panel of judges.
What did Attensity’s engineers build to showcase the company’s sentiment analysis and analytics technologies? Here’s the Attensity description:
With the Twitter API up and running, Team Attensity used Raspberry Pi to process tweets using #obama and #utahtechweek. Simultaneously, the team used Arduino to code sentiments from the tweets using a red light for negative sentiments, blue for positive sentiments, and yellow for neutral sentiments.
Attensity was pleased with the outcome in Utah. More hackathons are in the firm’s future. I wonder if one can deploy IBM Watson using a Raspberry Pi or showcase HP Autonomy with an Arduino.
How will hackathons generate revenue? I am not sure. The effort seems like a cost hole to me.
Stephen E Arnold, October 28, 2014