Beginning on Wednesday evening, techies from all over the country, most from the tri-state area, gathered in Newark, New Jersey for Brick City’s Tech Week. From a discussion providing tips for entrepreneurial success and TEDxNJIT, the first TEDx program in the city to focus on technology, to STEM Day at St. Phillips Academy and a policy discussion on reshaping Newark into this country’s next tech hub, the five-day period was packed with immense learning, networking and good ol’ blerd fun.
Blerdology, the social enterprise focused on sustaining the black tech community, brought its 24-hour hackathon series, #blackhack, to Rutgers Business School where close to 20 minority coders and developers hacked it out to develop apps and websites for local non-profits and startups. The charity hackathon was sponsored by Newark-based interactive media firm Medina Citi and energy efficiency company OPOWER, and garnered corporate and community partners like the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development at Rutgers Business School, MailChimp, Brick City Development Corp. and Initiative Consulting Group. Newark Mayor Cory Booker stopped in, lending his support to the entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and students in attendance.
“We saw Newark as an emerging tech hub,
and we really felt there were a lot of elements here, and that Newark had creative people and creative entities that made it a great fit for the next great tech Mecca in the United States,†said Amanda Spann, co-founder and CMO of Blerdology.Rutgers Business School juniors Christopher Arthur and Christopher Akparanta worked on building a prototype for their startup’s website. The duo, who founded CampusBord, a platform that allows students to better communicate, network and connect with each other, won this weekend’s hackathon. CampusBord’s website and app will take flyers and digitize them, so that students have access to those materials on their smartphones and computers. The business majors plan to soak up all the feedback they get and roll their service out to the Rutgers New Brunswick campus, Princeton University, Montclair State University, The College of New Jersey and Kean University.
“Going forward, we have other great ideas we plan to develop and include in the service to increase traffic to the website, and make the entire college experience of students even more worthwhile,†Arthur said.
There were several entrepreneurs and startups present at Blerdology’s latest hackathon. Here’s a look at what the digital do-gooders were working on:
SAHSHÉ
Founded by Princeton graduates Carron White and Ruth Fombrun, SAHSHÉ offers women of
color a subscription-based service that delivers stylish bags of 4-5 personalized hair care, skin care and cosmetic samples right to their doorstep for $12 a month. What places SAHSHÉ in its own lane is the technology and data used to remove the legwork in finding products that actually work.“I felt there was no technology out there that would actually take my features and my needs into account–my ethnic hairstyling practices, what compliments my skin color, my undertones. There was no technology paying attention to that,†said White.
White came up with SAHSHÉ’s 2-minute beauty quiz questions, while Fombrun, who has an engineering background, came up with the algorithm that does the matching. The algorithm takes the data that users input such as your ethnicity, hair texture, skin shade and skin concerns, and incorporates all of that data–along with your income, where you shop and whether or not you’d prefer eco-conscious products–to match users with the best luxe products for their specific beauty needs.
SAHSHÉ is launching in the spring of 2013.
Capital Cause
Washington D.C.-based nonprofit Capital Cause was in the building, creating a new website for the nearly 4-year-old organization. Mobilizing millennials, namely young philanthropists, to get involved and give back, Capital Cause founder Kezia Williams
wanted to revamp their website, giving users the opportunity to give right on the site, as well as having a visible place for special, crowdsourcing projects. Capital Cause has grown since its start in 2009, organizing events such as the Young Philanthropists Industry Brunch and spearheading initiatives like the Giving Circles Project, with 5,000 philanthropists in the D.C. area.Head blerd Kat Calvin, co-founder and chief executive at Blerdology, helped design Capital Cause’s new website. In the coming year, Capital Cause hopes to expand to Newark, as well as Atlanta, Georgia.
It Takes A Village, Inc. (ITV)
Last year alone, tax payers spent $52,865.00 incarcerating someone, said Nicole Singletary, founder of It Takes A Village, Inc., a prisoner reentry program that’s an academic, trade skills training apprenticeship program. Launching in Newark next year, the 16-month program is geared toward formerly incarcerated, non-violent offenders, training them in hands-on trade skills instruction such as EPA cleanup, storm water management, water infrastructure repair, home remodeling services, and auto body repair. The only requirement of ITV is that the offenders have to open their business in the community that they once terrorized. Singletary describes her program as “the gift that keeps on giving.â€
Singletary, a community activist, educator and Berkeley College graduate student, has lost friends and former students to senseless crime and violence in her Newark community, which prompted her to create ITV. “We’re giving and providing that second-chance option for persons that are disadvantaged in the labor department,†she said. She, along with on-staff coders, worked on ITV’s website.
LoudWhisper, LLC
The LoudWhisper app, founded by South Jersey-native Kara Borel, would allow end users to follow different companies and receive deals based on location and categories of interest. For small and medium-sized businesses, the push-notification app allows them to better communicate with their customers by informing them about promotional deals. “You can push that ‘whisper’, which is what we’re calling it right now, to them,†said Borel. “It’s a quite way of communicating, and the end result is you want to create a raucous because you want 5,000 people to get your message.â€
Borel worked with the SAHSHÉ founders and Rochester Institute of Technology graduate Travis Johnson to create a logo and website for her business.
Blerd or not, visit the Blerdology website for a listing of their upcoming events.