Fargo hackathon illustrates area’s growing tech industry

AT&T-sponsored app development event likely to be first of many

BY KRIS BEVILL

Fueled by free pizza, ice cream and all the caffeine they desired, about 50 programmers, software developers, graphic designers, students and curious onlookers gathered at Myriad Mobile’s downtown Fargo headquarters Dec. 3 for the first of what organizers hope will be many Fargo hackathons.

Hackathons are often 24-hour or weekend sessions designed to bring varying technology talents together to create mobile applications for any number of purposes. Dubbed “Hack Fargo,” this four-hour event could be considered a mini-hackathon, designed to gauge the interest level of potential participants while still offering enough time for groups to develop their ideas into actionable projects. Groups were free to design applications of their choosing, but special emphasis was given to two theme industries — agriculture and health care.

At the end of the four-hour session, teams presented their projects to a panel of judges who chose winners in three categories — most polished, most creative and craziest idea (that just may change the world). The Most Polished award was given to an app called “Show Me the Money,” which was developed to allow users to see the average value of an acre of land in any county in North Dakota from 1989 to present day. The Most Creative award was given to an app named iOculist, which allows users to self-check their eye health. The winning team for the Craziest Idea award designed an app called Pill Connection, or

Pill C, which would assist the visually impaired in identifying medications by reading Near Field Communication tags attached to pill bottles.

AT&T was the lead sponsor of the event, a first for the company in the upper Midwest. Cheryl Riley, AT&T’s director of external affairs for North Dakota, says the company often sponsors hackathons around the country to promote the development of new products for its customers and other industries, and North Dakota’s growing technology industry made it a good fit for the company’s first event in the region.

“With North Dakota being such a technology hub, it just made a lot of sense for us to bring that sort of event to North Dakota, and particularly to Fargo with all of the technology businesses that are in that area,” she says.

According to Riley, AT&T is also increasing its presence in the state and has invested more than $80 million into its North Dakota assets over the last few years, most recently installing 130 4G LTE sites around the state. She expects the company will continue to add to its assets in the coming year, noting that the oil and gas industry and agriculture industry as well as technology companies increasingly rely on mobile broadband to run their operations.

“North Dakota is such a growing market for us — it’s an exciting place to do business. It’s a really pro-business type of state so we are really looking forward to continuing that level of investment,” she says.

As for Hack Fargo, Riley says the event exceeded the company’s expectations. She credits local organizers at Emerging Prairie for making the event a success. Annika Nynas, director of events and experience at Emerging Prairie, says AT&T’s support allowed them to create a community event that had never been done before in Fargo.

“We were really amazed by the level of community interest in the event — from participants to sponsors to spectators,” she says. “I encountered several people who came to the event to simply learn more about what a hackathon is, which shows us that people in Fargo are interested in being part of these high-level tech and development events.”

Riley says the turn-out was impressive enough to warrant AT&T’s participation in future Fargo hackathons. “It’s something I think we would really look at trying to do again in the future,” she says. “We were happy to provide the seed money for it initially and continue to help make it grow bigger and bigger every year.” PB

Kris Bevill Editor, Prairie Business 701-306-8561, kbevill@prairiebizmag.com