My first #hackathon via #ADN

 

I've been to a few tech shows, including LeWeb in Paris and the London Web Summit, but I've never attended a hackathon because I've never been invited to one.

I crashed the App.net (ADN) hackathon this evening. 

There was no central project being undertaken by the developers participating in the hackathon, instead they were working either alone or in small groups on creating or improving their own ADN apps for use on the networking site.

I was amazed that watching a room full of people -- I'm 99.9 percent certain they were all men -- working on MacBook Pro (MBP) laptops at the ADN hackathon @storify headquarters in San Francisco was quite -- dare I say -- zen-like? 

Much better than most of the films available on Netflix IMHO.

A group of ADN people gathered in the "#Patter Peanut Gallery" to chat and observe proceedings at the hackathon as they were streamed live via Ustream  -- At first those of us who weren't in San Francisco tried to figure out who everyone was at the Hackathon. We were trying to put faces to ADN handles and avatars.

Fortunately @orian, who was at the hackathon, took pity on us and helped us identify people. @teawithcarl gave us a talk on a whole range of subjects, including his thoughts on the semantic web and redundancy.

"It's going to be one 'Star Trek' database," @teawithcarl said, referring to a utopian future where online services aren't duplicated.

Unfortunately, at around the time @teawithcarl was sharing his ideas, the stream, which was periodically interrupted by advertisements, lack of audio or a frozen image, completely died.

We switched over to a Google Plus (G+) Hangout, which was started by @po -- at first only @po and I were in it, so we left and went back to the #Patter Peanut Gallery.

Then @po started another G+ hangout and more people joined.

It was fantastic to meet @trine @jdscolam @tonymillion @berg @ajmckee @adrianus.

Unfortunately, @sham, who was central to organising the #patter chat, couldn't really join the G+ hangout as he was without a microphone or webcam -- neither could @Indigo because she doesn't have a G+ account.

@duerig and @q, who had helped set up the original live stream, were in their own #patter room, working on something -- not sure what. I lurked in their room a bit, but couldn't figure it out. [Please see below for an update about what they were doing.]

Meanwhile @kosso tried to set up a video stream via G+, which seems to have worked for a while.

Although the event was held @Storify HQ, apparently no one has yet Storified it.

NB***After I published this blog, @duerig told me that he, @ryantharp and @q were working on a system whereby people can post a YouTube song on ADN with the hashtag #jukebox and it will play automatically, becoming part of a stream of songs.

Visiting http://vidcast-app.net allows users to create a stream event that others can join. If users want to try "jukebox mode", which will play the tunes as if by an automated DJ, they can visit http://vidcast-app.net/view and the feed will play YouTube links with the #jukebox hashtag.

Other related posts:

Being @po

Patter of tiny feet, lulz in App.net 3rd dimension

App.net: User utopia? 
Posting a picture from BlackBerry to Shrtmsg.com, app.net