Manila's First Angelhack Hackaton Event Successful

AngelHack Manila, the first ever Philippine hackaton event was successfully held last June 8 and 9, 2013 at the Voyager Innovations' Ortigas office. More than 250 participants signed up to "the largest group of hackaton participants" and pitched about fifty 50 projects. I, myself, was excited when I read AngelHack Philippines Ambassador Elaine Cedillo's post.

So, What is AngelHack?

From AngelHack's website, "AngelHack organizes hackathon competitions for web developers and entrepreneurs, called AngelHacks, where they can learn developer tools, meet new friends, and receive funding and mentorship for their startup ideas. In 2013, AngelHack will organize 100 hackathons, bringing together 15,000+ developers in 50+ cities. Winners from every city are put through the AngelHack Accelerator Program, where we mentor them for 12 weeks before bringing them out to Silicon Valley to raise investment and introduce them to incubators."

Choosing the Top 13 Projects

There were 2 rounds of judging. For the first round, 4 separate rooms were used. Each team has room assignment and given 2 minutes each to present. Three projects were chosen from each room to make-up the top 13 and these are:

AskYourBiz
Call Me
Evenue
Mingle
Nearby Geeks
pagesnapp
Quizza
Route Scout
True Swift
Zander
Pinoy Explorer
yrbk
Thingamadibs (Dibs)

During the second round, the above project teams were again given 3 minutes each to pitch and answer judges' questions. The codes were also reviewed after to ensure that everything was built during the hackaton.

Criteria for judging are

35% Feasibility of Project Concept
35% Technical Excellence
30% Market Potential

CallMe and pagesnapps emerged as the top 2 projects.

And the winners are...

AngelHack Manila 2013 Grand Prize winner is ... pagesnapps. Team members are Marvin Consuegra, Raymund Delfin, Rolly Rulete, Jay-Rodrigo Albano, Mio Miguel Galang. Built using Java, PHP, Yii, Android, Facebook Open Graph, Blackberry, and MySQL, it is a system that can turn Facebook pages into apps

After 24 hours coding and about 5 hours of time-controlled pitching and judges' deliberations, pagesnapps - system that turns Facebook pages into apps - was chosen as AngelHack Manila 2013 Grand Prize winner. Aside from $10,000 cash prize, team members will receive 12 weeks mentoring then flown to Silicon Valley where they'll have chance to pitch pagesnapps to potential investors during TechCrunch Disrupt, the biggest and most popular startup event in San Francisco.

Zander developers/designers: Harold Ocampo, Ian Tappa, Francis Fajardo, Mark Segalle, and Louie David during the awarding of the $20,000 Google apps credits. Inset: Zander fishbowl prototype

Zander team received special award of $20,000 Google Apps credits.

Jessie Panganiban receiving his "Hindi Ako Masyado Lasing" prizes

Jessie Panganiban, winner of "Hindi Ako Masyado Lasing" award, received nerf gun and 6 bottles of San Miguel flavored beer.

For having developed Blackberry devices compatible apps, special Blackberry prizes were given to HackBlitz, Dibs (Thingamadibs), Konvoy, MailBug, UlapResto, TravelBud, pagesnapp,MindHub and Capicar.

First Day of AngelHack Manila in Pictures


fish bowl with submerged aeration gadget - prototype for Zander

SolarLink's solar panel app prototype is envisioned to lessen the cost of solar panel projects by providing online computation of loads and corresponding materials

Mentors from Asian Institute of Management, Orange and Bronze, Narra Venture Capital and Infinity.ly shared their expertise in software engineering, business analytics, validating the market, and how to successfully pitch a project.

Two projects that immediately caught my attention are Zander and SolarLink.

Interviewing Josh Constine, TechCrunch writer, was the bonus for the day.

Voyager Innovations headquarters - venue of the first ever hackaton in the Philippines, AngelHack Manila

Developers, programmers, and designer participants of AngelHack Manila

... more developer, programmer, and designer participants of AngelHack Manila

and more attendees of AngelHack Manila. Josh Constine of TechCrunch (in yellow shirt) doing his rounds

The organizers from Smart Developer Network taking a break

...and more members of the organizers on break - Paul Pajo, Smart developer evangelist (sitting with glasses) and Greg Gopman, AngelHack cofounder (center, backview), on break yet still playing with his gadget

the support group and volunteers

DJ Ramos (rightmost), AngelHack Philippines Ambassador, having fun with his sword toy. With him are what he called them "the Mozilla guys". They were willing to check my Mozilla installation but unfortunately, I did not bring my netbook with me.


Josh Constine, TechCrunch writer

Second Day of AngelHack Manila in Pictures

Closer Look at Some Participants

Evenue developer/designer Back: Leivince John Marte, Tyro Hunter Tan. Front: Ronald Rhey Minon, Anna Rose Catolpos Dexcleir Ranin. Evenue is where every event happens in real time. Before the event, the team members have done the designs, finalize the concept and develop proper time management. According to them, "There was not enough time for the demo we are planning. We managed the stress by just taking it slow and getting the basics done in time."

Grabbit developers/designers. Aldrin Clemente, Cyrolle Vendivil and Grace Anne Valencia. Grabbit is an Android app used to find nearby stores that sell items you're looking for. The team members who are software developers from Smart Communications Inc. learned about AngelHack through their officemates. And since then, planned the project and prepared the assets to be included. As developers, they've done mostly company applications before their participation in AngelHack.

Vivace Team: Reginald Deinla, Payton Yao, Kevin Atienza, Tim Joseph Dumol, and Joan Magno. TrueSwift built by Vivace using Ruby on Rails and Angular JS is a platform for people to outsource their errands. The team members came from Kalibrr (online learning that gets you a job), Shopzilla and AdMU. Some of them joined the Manila Game Jam in January of this year and won the Technical Excellence Award. Although not well-versed in the technology stack, they focused on their individual strengths and worked out well in the end. What will they do if they win the grand prize? SLEEP.. :)

TaskTracker developers/designers: Migelle Ramos, Abram Limpin, Rizzel Dy, and Therence Resabal. TaskTracker by Idea92 and built using C#, ASP.net, Azure and Java (Android) is said to be "Generic enough for everybody, Specific enough for anybody." Aside from TaskTracker, the group have successfully finished Directories Plus and currently working on myGuru. They experienced physical stress, back pain and neck pain and wished they had a resting area for their backs. They envisioned that with TaskTracker, project management tools will be more affordable.

Globbit developers/designers: Trina Florencio, Cariza Sy, Janus Balatbat, and Mark Nicolas. Globbit is an apps that will help businesses especially SMEs get a mobile presence without costing business owners much by pushing content to the mobile device without the need for internet. As preparation for AngelHack, they researched on past winners, looked for tips on how to create a winning pitch, studied frameworks and researched libraries that can make their idea feasible within a 24-hour hack timeframe. It's good to note that they've done the E-leksyon app for Comelec, the first app they launched and broadcasted for public use. Although considered a success, technically, E-leksyon still has lots of room for improvement.

PinoyExplorer developers/designers: Clyde Moreno, Paul Gilbert, Kristine Arias, and Christian Michael Monsueto. PinoyExplorer by Chaos Gaming, Inc. is envisioned to promote Philippines through gaming by offering gamers different adventures using local landmarks as settings. Game trial is free to download but full version requires purchasing and from the app's gains, they hope to support children and charities. If they won the grand prize, they would start their own game studio company, train for game development and work on a virtual nourishing game for UNICEF.

Quizza developers/designers: JE Ayson, Jelo Agnasin, Richard Lorenzana and Janssen Marwin Go. Quizza is a web app/phone app that can serve as reviewer. It aims to replace the paper reviewers haned out by review center. The team members who are all engineers from Icannhas, Inc. brainstormed on how they can use HTML/CSS, Python/Django, iOS, and Android to successfully finish and deliver the project in time

PayBilis designers/developers: Don Delloro, Israel Brizuela, and Richard Gamato. Paybilis is an app that will deliver bills to consumers in digital format. Payments will also be integrated with SMS notification

Zander developers/designers: Harold Ocampo, Ian Tappa, Francis Fajardo, Mark Segalle, Louie David. Zander which originated from a fish specie is a fully customizable system for every fishpond operator that can help them with real time monitoring of the water temperature in the fishpond. It can be used to regulate the water temperature and other factors affecting livestock’s growth. Built using ASP, Java (Android), and XAML by IS students of the College of St. Benilde, it was one of the Top 13 finalists, received the $20,000 Google apps credits special award and honored by Josh Constine "for getting their hands dirty or rather getting their hands wet.... for thinking outside of the box, not just doing the clone of something else but doing something really different."

Some Foods and Drinks

AngelHack Fun and Moods

The Judges And Judgement Hour

Josh Constine (TechCrunch), Greg Gopman (AngelHack founder) and Winston Damarillo (Exist and Morphlabs)

RaphWunsch (Metrodeal.com founder), Jay Yao (international graphic designer), Alvin Gendrano (Microsoft) and Ann Jacobe (Shoephoric.com founder)

Adrich Scheuders announcing vacancy of engineer position at Freelancer.com. P42,000.00 will be awarded to the one who can successfully recommend an engineer