#YACKATHON Partner Spotlight: E-180
Yelp’s very first ever community hackathon — aka #YACKATHON — is coming to Montreal February 6–8th, 2015, and part of what we think is exciting about this experiment is the idea of bringing Yelpers and Montrealers of all kinds together with engineers, designers, developers and data scientists to play with ideas and learn from each other about what Yelp’s deep data has to tell us. A natural partner for a project like this is a local start up that has made waves by innovating around how people come together to learn and teach each other. E-180 is a brain date platform that has made interesting use of Yelp’s API as a small part of their toolkit for peer education. They will be on hand to help teams come together at the start of the #YACKATHON and will sit on the jury at the end, so it seemed wise to have a quick chat with these Montreal mastermind-matchmakers about what they’re up to and what they hope to see at the #YACKATHON.
Yelp Montreal: Tell me a little about E-180 in your own words?
E-180: E-180 is a way to connect to the right people around you and learn from them, one-on-one and in person. We think a brain date with someone is not only an efficient way to learn something, but also a great way to meet people and build more humanly-connected cities.
YM: What do you think makes a hackathon a great experience for participants?
E-180: A hackathon is a great way for people to work together, to think differently and to bring things forward. A hackathon is a very creative time and space, where we are allowed as participants to leave our perfectionism behind and just work together with new colleagues on creating the prototype of something that could become amazing.
YM: What do you imagine could be the most interesting possible application of Yelp’s local business data?
E-180: Maybe you could have imagined our answer: understand what knowledge the people moving around in cities carry with them, and eventually connect these people depending on the space they share!
YM: What are you working on at E-180 that you’re most excited about right now?
E-180: A mobile application that will transform spaces (airports, coffee shops, university campuses, museums, etc.) into peer-learning hubs, connecting people sharing simultaneously a space for a spontaneous brain date.
Interested in meeting these inspiring folks who will be around for the YACKATHON? You should sign up! It’s free and there will be free beers and good eats and smart people and good times.
Let’s get it on. http://bit.ly/YACKATHON
