November 18–20 was Developer Camp in San Francisco.

Everyone won.

Hosted by Google, also sponsored by PullString, PubNub, Phillips, Honest Dollar, and Tech Wild, this was 48 hours of constant collaboration and learning-while-doing.

It begins with a Pitch Session, where everyone gets a chance to speak.

This organization was founded on principles that drive innovation culture in the tech community—and these are more than just ideals..

Best Game

Realm Connector

Neha Jamthe

From the developer:

“In a world where using a chatbot to find a friend is your only hope of surviving the multiverse. Ask questions to find the face that will open the gate to the next realm. Call on friends to help survive future realms. I built the chatbot using Pullstring and put it on a Web Page using their Web API. In the future I plan to connect this chatbot on Unity using pullstring’s Unity API so I can launch it as a fun app.”

Best Hardware

QTrace

Mathews Jacob, John Call

This team detected a seismic activity and published the aggregated result in a beautiful visualization.

From the developer:

“Future plans: Crowdsource and deploy thousands of low-cost detectors to capture and refine the Big Data problem into a solution to ultimately predict earthquakes.”

Best Lady

Adventures in Baby Naming

Amanda Barden

New to programming altogether, Amanda worked all weekend to implement a quiz designed to help parents-to-be choose the perfect baby name. She borrowed a Camp Counselor’s laptop to learn iOS. She acquired an iPad to enable herself to try Swift Playgrounds.

Amanda is the best example of the Developer Camp spirit of persistence and self-confidence, a can-do attitude, and the ability to learn quickly without fear.

Best New Developer

Using Swift Playgrounds

Nancy Wallace

New to software development, Nancy worked all weekend to complete Lesson 1 inside Swift Playgrounds.

Coolest

Aaireal App

Samerial Johns, Max Chung

This power duo worked to create and demonstrate a Social Travel Networking Experience over the weekend.

Best Ecommerce

One Stop

Priya Krishnan

This is a custom makeup application that matches your skin tone/preferences with products customized specifically for you with facial recognition. The service can then send products to your home, with tutorials for you to learn how to put makeup on.

Most Educational

MomBot

Cassie Hamilton, Rachel Goldman, Matt Oatman, Robert Mathew, Reese Netro, Sonal Mecwan

Using PullString and Google technologies, this team of undergrads worked through the night to produce a chatbot that sounds and acts like a loving mother. Gently guiding the user towards solutions to problems like removing stains, staying healthy, and paying the rent on time, MomBot is an experience in comfort.

Best Open Source

Connect

John Regner, Jay Yupin Hu, Peer Dampmann, Stella Su

This team created a simpler and more efficient way to connect with your loved ones and people you care about. The app utilizes realtime messaging to send messages whenever you leave or arrive at a location—or just to a send quick note. Connect utilizes Siri for hands-free communications like sending messages and location updates.

Led by one of our Camp Counselors, this team used PullString, PubNub, and IBM Cloud Analysis to bring their idea to life with a combination of unique talents.

Best Health Care

Exercise Pal

Melissa Perenson

A previous Developer Camp winner and longtime volunteer stayed dedicated to her project over the weekend and showed real progress. Built to keep track of your physical therapy and trainer exercises, this app allows the user to input information their own way.

With the help of one of our Camp Counselors, this app was a working demo by the end of the weekend.

Best Web App

eEstate

Akshaya Ravichandran, Alex Zou, Alex Levy

Designing a chat bot is easy. Building one that works, with multiple technologies like PubNub Blocks and IBM Cloud Analysis—in a weekend—that is a daunting task. This team built a chat bot to broker as an intermediary between buyers and sellers in real estate transactions.

PubNub Fellow

TellMe

Diwakar Goel, Jason Han

TellMe is an intelligent video analysis service which can have applications in fields of security surveillance, monitoring, and education. TellMe can notify when any event of interest happens in the setup area. From the developer:

Future plans include interaction with the bot, to ask it questions about what is happening in the monitored area. For example: TellMe what’s happening in my living room? TellMe did my cat eat her food?

For this event, the team built an iOS app and Web app making use of PubNub, realtime communications, image recognition services, all integrated with Phillips Hue lights.

PubNub Fellow

Zizani

Yan Min Hong, Nick Reed, Anne Torricelli, Ashley Vernon

PubNub Fellow

Kindred

Krysia Olszewska, Phoebe Kimm, Rich Knight, Roopesh Manjunatha

Using PullString, PubNub Blocks, and IBM Cloud Analysis, the Kindred team showed what is possible when a talented group dedicates themselves to the betterment of others for the weekend.

PubNub Fellow

Expert Sue

Team leader Eric Oesterle has been to each and every Developer Camp over the past 9 years. When he heard of this one, and about our sponsor Lululemon, he had a brainstorm about wearables.

Technical clothing for technical people.

This solution is an ergonomic coach built with Arduino, PullString, Lululemon, Bluetooth LE, iOS, Swift, and Node.js.

• Eric Oesterle
• Min Choi
• Lenore Alford
• Chris Wetherell

Phillips Hue Spotlight Award

Mood Lighting

Elizabeth Dielentheis

This app monitors chat and changes colors of lights according to the tone of the conversation. With help from the Phillips developer group, this one-woman team built her demo entirely in one afternoon and won the praise of all.

Youngest Developer

Baby-1–1

Francisco de la Pena, Rohit Jhangiani, Piedad Garnica, Yu Cheng Chien, Abel Regalado

This team has two children amongst them, each 8 weeks old. So dedicated to the idea, one mom and dad brought their little girl with them all weekend to developer an expert-backed baby health chatbot. Recognizing that health care information is unevenly distributed, these parents—joined by a high schooler—set out to bring wisdom to anyone regardless of insurance or financial situation.

This young lady brought our average age way down for the weekend.

Aeryk Blair Memorial Prize for Most Potential

Using Swift Playgrounds

Juleus Chapman

Our good friend, volunteer, and multiple-award winner Aeryk Blair passed away last month at the age of 23. He was the son of one of our organizers, and a powerful force in the community. As sad as we are to lose him, it is important to honor his contributions with this Memorial Award.

Aeryk is on the right, pictured here with the Untangledd team after their win for Most Useful.

An elementary school teacher with a heart of gold, our award winner is a first-time programmer with plans for graduate study in educational technology. He finished the first lesson inside Swift Playgrounds and showed off his work, to inspire us all.

Runner Up

Selfless and Smart

Mohamed Ayadi

Having won at Developer Camp last summer, Mohamed became a Camp Counselor this Fall. He attended trainings on sponsor technologies, showed a great deal of ingenuity and initiative, and volunteered for numerous tasks over this weekend.

He lent his laptop to our Best Lady for the weekend so that she could learn Xcode—and taught her what she needed to know. He went from team to team, offering help and code, and generally embodied the ideals of the organization itself.

We are proud to have brilliant coders like Mohamed with us, and look forward to watching his good karma return to him.

Mohamed counsels several teams at once.

Most Helpful

Dedicated and Talented

Dan Zeitman

Camp Counselor and original Developer Camp participant—for all 9 years—Dan stepped up this year to become invaluable to the organizing team. He has won as part of our showcase in the past, so this time he skipped the honor in order to help others full time over the weekend.

Dan brought sponsor relationships, attended and rocked the training sessions with sponsors, personally assisted and supported Developer Camp founders, and we can legitimately say that this event would not have happened without him.

Dan counsels multiple crews at once.

For his commitment and abilities, Dan was awarded our Grand Prize, our highest honor, the title of Most Helpful. This organization was founded on the principles of Open Source, of giving back to the community. Dan represents those principles by example. He is now sporting a 9.7″ iPad Pro with AppleCare, Apple Pencil, and BookBook leather case—so that he may better serve the ideals of inclusion, diversity, and equality.

Everyone who presented over the weekend won an award. Beyond that, they are all now included in our Camp Counselor program, to pass on what they have learned. Now they are here for you.