May Cohort Demo Day Recap (Part 2)

This is Part 2 of the May Cohort's Demo Day Recap. For Part 1, click here.

In Part 1 of the recap, the recurring theme was the way students handled the business and real-life implications of their projects. In this next group, there's a different (but related) thread tying them together: solving their own problems. For all these projects, the students simply saw a problem or opportunity in their own lives, and came up with a way to solve it. After all, isn't that what being a developer is all about?

How Are The Folks?

Duncan Strong and Gordon Wilkinson

Many of our teams had visually striking presentations, but this team decided to make themselces visually striking presenters! Duncan wanted us to truly understand the plight of elderly family members who need periodic checking up on, so he donned a wig when role playing "Betty Parker," mother-in-law extraordinaire. From there, the team explained how their app use SMS to allow family members to coordinate regular check-ins with their seniors, for things like daily pills or exercise, and the user would be able to see if the recipient wasn't keeping up. All of this happens without old Betty Parker ever having to interact with this newfangled "application" mumbo-jumbo.

Outter

Slav Kurilyak, Andrew Kong, and Eric Lee

Taking on languages and frameworks that they scarcely covered in class (hello Angular & MongoDB), the creators of Outter tackled the problem of productivity with email. The current system doesn't empower the recipient, leaving them at the whim of the sender's intent, of which they have no idea. So the Outter boys added structure to emails and messages by inviting the sender to categorize their message (FYI, question, action request, etc), allowing for better prioritization for the recipient. How much did it help their productivity? Enough that their official product release is just days away!

Black Tie

http://black-tie.herokuapp.com/

Barrett Stutzman, Brett Campbell, and Kevin Sherman

By the end of their 8 week course, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and love was in the air. To these 3 students, that meant one thing: wedding season. The three of them had been to countless weddings over the years, and they knew that events like a wedding are never as simple as a one-click RSVP. Sure, there's the big show, but there's also rehearsal dinners, bachelor parties, bridal showers etc. While the Outter group above might be solving email productivity, guests don't have time for 10 different emails, and planners want to be able to easily manage the lists. Enter Black Tie, a one stop app that allows planners to coordinate all the various dates and attendees! Goodbye long winded emails, hello people who don't hate the marrying couple by the time they show up to the wedding!

Unfortunately, the students' intense, wedding-related summer schedules meant they could only present at the employer-exclusive Demo Day, so many people didn't get to see this great project... until now.

Unite

Gabriel Taylor-Russ and Jeff Brunson

Unite's presentation certainly had the "wow" factor - their homepage featuring a dynamic background of exotic partygoers ensured that. In fact, their fun and lighthearted presentation garnered some of the biggest laughs of the night. But Unite was more than just flash. Gabe and Jeff came here from well out of town (Australia and Colorado, respectively), so they knew what they were looking for in a social platform for travellers. They packed the functional punch to make it effective: Instagram API integration in their user profiles, strong search functionality, and location-based services all featured. But yeah… that homepage video was nice.

I hope you enjoyed reading about these great ideas as much as I enjoyed seeing them in action! *Want to see the next round of brilliance? Register now for the next cohort's Demo Day, Friday, August 8th! *