Techies are today’s coveted cool kids and so I was pretty excited to be asked to support a start-up with their spin on a hackathon: a createathon (another project will be taking place simultaneously with the hackathon).
Hackathons, which are usually 24 to 48 hours, are a chance for programmers, developers and entrepreneurs to show off their skills, network with others of the same passion and mindset, as well as win big prizes for their next big innovative idea. The biggest, so far, was salesforce.com’s payout of $1 million to the winners in 2013. What’s perhaps even more surprising is that the cloud computing company has a market capitalization of $40 billion yet hasn’t made a profit since it started 16 years ago!
It is projected that by 2020, there will be a shortfall of five million technical jobs, that can be filled by the skills of those who participate in hackathons. (I guess programming is a good career option to recommend the kids, particularly my nephew who takes too much interest in any of my potential boyfriend’s net-worth.)
On the subject of modern-day innovators, I finally saw Savage Beauty, the homage to the late Alexander McQueen. It surpassed my expectations (considering clothes are as much about feel and movement as their look), providing an assault-on-the-senses theatrical experience. It was also bittersweet. McQueen’s final Spring/Summer 2010 show, Plato’s Atlantis, was a live-streamed multi-media experience that featured short, reptile-patterned, digitally-printed dresses and huge 3D-printed blunt snakeskin platforms.
I left wondering what McQueen would be doing now (and how did he turn any of these extravagantly weird and wonderful creations into a buck). And in today’s fast-changing world it’s good to bear in mind something McQueen said, ‘You’ve got to know the rules to break them… That’s what I’m here for – to demolish the rules but keep the tradition.’
