Here are ten hackers we met at today’s Disrupt Hackathon. These folks have steeled themselves with snack food and coffee and are hacking away as we speak.
Rob Banagale
Rob Banagale is the founder of a new product launching at the Hackathon, so we’re going to let him debut the name. In the words of Rob, “it’s a new identity service that lets you represent yourself through a series of pictures.” We’re not quite sure what that means but we’re excited to see.
A couple of Rob’s tech heroes include Steve Jobs, and Arthur C. Clarke. His proudest moment of hackery was when he added Twitter integration to a live music chat room for live music fans. He seems cool, but his picture says it all. Blue Steel, baby.
He’s based out of Seattle, but if you want to get in touch with Rob, hook up with him on Twitter: @jetsetter
Conrad Rushing
Conrad has a bad case of carpal tunnel, but he’s still ready and raring to go. As CTO, he’s launching his new product at Disrupt’s Start-Up Battlefield. Obviously, he was a bit sparse with the details, but his launch isn’t the only reason he’s here.
Conrad is looking to hire, and he made a great choice in looking here. A couple projects he’s working on during the Hackathon are an auto-tagging system for language processing, and building a rudimentary webapp based on his API in time for the launch.
Some of Conrad’s heroes are Steve Jobs, Larry Wall, and Kevin Mitnick. Find him on Twitter: @crushallhumans
Monica To
Monica is a third-year student at UC Berkeley, and this is her first trip to Hackathon. She is here with a group of more experienced hackers, and said she felt she had to come. “Everyone tells me that the Hackathon is such a pivotal moment in people’s lives. I had to come.”
Her group is brainstorming through a few hacking ideas, but things are still up in the air. Luckily, most of the pressure is off Monica. She’s here for the experience, not the cash.
Want to get in touch with Monica? Check her out on Twitter: @monicato
Maria Nasioti
Maria flew quite a ways to come to our Hackathon (she’s from Greece), but she seems stoked to be here. And I’m personally pretty stoked she’s here, too. Maria is a designer for BugSense. They have a number of different products in the works/on the market, but today’s project is called Ping Pong Hero.
It’s basically a way to use your Android phone as a ping pong paddle, and play a virtual game of table tennis sans table, ball, or real paddles. The app will even share real time scores and stats to your friends who can’t see the action live. Very cool.
Maria’s point of pride is Bug Sense, a six-month old start up with over 1,000 active users. If you feel like chatting her up, visit her Twitter: @Maria_Nas
Guy Vider
Guy’s group was silly, and didn’t register. So he’s been waiting for them since the Hackathon started. Based in Sunnyvale, CA, Guy is all about safety — at the last Hackathon he built an app that alerts you of nearby wildfires. This time he’s switched things up, but we wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise.
Guy’s hero is Bill Gates, which is a refreshing choice amidst all the Jobs fans. Follow Guy on Twitter: @traveltechguy
Joselle Ho
Josie is from L.A., and made her way to San Fran this weekend after a very successful stint at last year’s TechCrunch Disrupt. You may remember her product, People’s Choice Award winner, Miso Music.
Today, her plan is to build a gaming app, also based on music. You are asked a series of trivia questions related to playing music, or perhaps even put on the spot to play an “F” on the nearest instrument.
When Josie grows up, she wants to be like Angie Chang of Women 2.0 and Miso Media’s current CTO, Ryan Tsukamoto.
Interested? Follow Josie on Twitter: @joselleho
Ryan Tsukamoto
You may recognize the name, and if you don’t you obviously aren’t reading very carefully. Along with being one of Josie’s heroes, Ryan is also the CTO at Miso Music. While Josie works on her music trivia game, Ryan is focusing on an augmented reality app that lets you play musical instruments. Right now, the focus is on a set of air drums.
Ryan is originally from Hawaii, but is currently based in L.A. His hero is Alonzo Church, and his proudest moment is winning that People’s Choice Award last year. That would be my proudest moment, too.
Want to learn more about Ryan? @Misomusic
Danil Kozyatnikov
Danil’s company is launching this week on Start Up Alley. But today, his focus is on a product that has to do with the after world. We can’t go into too much more detail, but it’s definitely a necessity in today’s world.
It’s possible that Danil has come further than anyone here at the Hackathon — he’s from Siberia. Unfortunately, the rest of his team couldn’t quite get visas in time, so he’s skyping with them on a mid-sized LCD at his table.
Dan’s hero is Loic Le Meur, who you may recognize from Seesmic. If you want to know more about Dan, check him out on Twitter: @danilka
Zac Cunningham
Visiting for the Hackathon and for his brother Ben’s birthday, Zac came all the way from Tallahassee, FL. He and his group are still brainstorming, but one thing they seem to have ruled out is the overly common social networking angle.
Zac deals mostly with the back-end of the business, while his brother Ben is more the face of the company. His heroes include John Carmack, and his bro. Zac, oddly enough, doesn’t have a Twitter account, but you can get to know his brother Ben: @codeblue87
Jennie Lees
Last but not least among our Hackathon Hackers is Jennie Lees. She lives in the Bay Area, but her accent proves her English roots. The plan for today is to improve Hacker News for mobile, and eventually personalize it by bringing in other news sources.
A few of Jennie’s heroes include the oft-mentioned Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Hacker News’s Paul Graham. One of her proudest moments was surviving the Hackathon last year, and building something that worked: an app that rated start up pitches in real time.
If you want to get to know Jennie better, follow her on Twitter: @jennielees