Canadian Music Week Introduces their Very First Hackathon!

What can you innovate in just 24 hours? A whole lot, in fact. This past Tuesday, I had the utmost pleasure to cover the Canadian Music Association’s very first Hackathon! The event, lasting from Tuesday afternoon till Wednesday evening, was filled with pressure, excitement, and fun.

The event brought in participants from various backgrounds, such as programmers, coders, musical artists, and people with no technical experience who just wanted to take on new challenges.

As I made my way to the event at Brainsights’ Toronto office, I was greeted by the facilitator, Travis Laurendine and the many teams participating in the Hackathon.

After a few words from sponsors like Universal Music Group, Muzooka, Cloudinary and other facilitators, the participants formed teams and began to brainstorm ideas with regard to their respective projects.

I had the opportunity to talk to the one-and-only SATE, a talented Toronto musician who has shaken up rock n’ roll genre with powerful melodies. SATE had her own idea in mind: infuse augmented reality into her live shows to create a unique concert goer experience.

However SATE wasn’t the only one with an innovative idea. Team Good Kid created a Name-Generator Application, where a user would be able to type in an artist’s name and the software would spew out what genre’s the artist would ideally play.

Participants continued to work away on their creations overnight and prepared to pitch their ideas to a group of judges the following day. The roster of judges consisted of: Jay Rosenzweig (CEO of Rosenzweig & Co.), Jodi Kovitz (Founder & CEO of #MoveTheDial), Shawn Wilson (CEO of Muzooka), Greg Nisbet (Founder & CEO of MEDIAZOIC), **David Dufresne (**Partner at Panache Ventures), **Roger Chabra (**CIO of TribalScale), and **Ralph Simon (**Founder & Chief Executive, Mobilium Global).

After the 24 hours of non-stop work, the teams travelled to The Sheraton Hotel where the Canadian Music Week showcase was taking place. Each team brought a creative idea to the table, however, there could only be one grand prize winner.

Various prices were awarded to the teams which participated in the hackathon courtesy of the events sponsors, but the grand prize winner was Team SATE and their AR-centred app for concert-goers that create a memorable experience. The team received the opportunity to continue with their passion to develop new ideas in Belgium’s upcoming Hackathon.

Congratulations to everyone who participated at this year’s Hackathon! If you want to to watch the highlights from CMW’s Hackathon, you can check out Daily Planet’s latest episode here!