Hacking on things in Cincinnati
This past weekend was an event called HackCincy. That’s short for “Hack Cincy”. It was, as far as quality output goes, the best hackathon that Cincinnati has ever put on. I mean that.
The thing about Cincinnati is everyone is always talking about how we should “Keep an eye on it!” And “You won’t believe what’s going on there!” Well, it’s starting to wear on me a little bit. It’s starting to get under my skin. Why don’t you keep an eye on me giving you the finger?

When you think about the output of a typical hackathon, what do you think? You’re going to have some goofy IoT that breaks during the demo. You’re going to have someone who for some reason has absolutely nothing done but still gets up to present. You’re going to have some decent stuff, and you’re going to have some real killers. Maybe one thing that’s just a home run.
That’s pretty much exactly what we got. We met parity with everyone’s stereotypical idea of a hackathon. A large-ish (50 people?) group of mostly developers got together on a Saturday morning, and spent 24 straight hours working on passion projects. No business plans, no market research, no healthy food.
Then they presented their work.
We had a Morse-code based salt block. We had a Frogger-style Ethereum-backed internet gambling site. We had a zombie tag game that almost certainly will lead to assault charges. We gave out AWS credits and Echo dots and cold hard cash.
In other words, it was your typical hackathon. In Cincinnati. With developers who can do anything any other developer anywhere can do. With the same tech. The same tools. The same salt blocks.
We are at parity with the coasts.
Sure, there are less of us. Sure, there are less venture-backed startups. Sure, there is less venture capital. But so what? The last time I checked, Twitter, Uber, and Snap were bleeding money. I don’t need your over-inflated housing market to feel like I’m surrounded by smart people doing cool work.
Wait, this was supposed to be a puff piece on HackCincy…
Great job to the organizers, led by Chris “Poo” Ridenour. Full disclosure, my company, Alchemy (a P&G company), was a sponsor of the event. All of the teams were really impressive. No one choked on stage. Kevin Habich made everyone laugh. The judges were world class.

The team that won, something Tickets, uses Ethereum to back ticket sales. It was really smart. I hope they turn that into a business.
I also hope everyone leaves San Francisco and takes a look at what we’ve got cooking. Also rent is 90% cheaper here. :-D
