Music Hack Day San Francisco gave me that awkward feeling that tends to surface when I am slightly outside of my comfort zone. It was an event like none I had ever seen, in a city that I’d never been, so I guess it was normal that I’d have some nervous excitement. As native Californians sipped their early Saturday morning coffee, geeks from around the globe gathered at Automattic Lounge, headquarters for the creators of Word Press, for 48 hours of unadulterated programming.
Perfectly placed on The Embarcadero at Pier 38 just a few blocks south of the San Francisco Giants’ baseball stadium, our home for the weekend was a curbside first floor loft with gigantic windows and vaulted wood beamed ceilings. Inside, there were more black-framed glasses than MacBooks, the most comfortable office furniture imaginable, and a palpable desire to create the best new music applications.
This installment of Music Hack Day, hosted by Paul Lamere, Director of the Application Development Community at The Echo Nest [a musical intelligence company], had an added bit of excitement due to the release of the illustrious iPad. Paul ran the event with an iron fist, only allowing the best hackers to attend and staying on schedule within fractions of a second. I was not only impressed by the types of data collected by The Echo Nest, but also by the way that this information was presented, allowing developers to build their own applications on the spot.
Read my full guest report on Creative Deconstruction.
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There are two T's in Automattic.
Thanks Eric. I guess the second “T” fell off with all of the editing and spell check. Very interested in your work with Xentek. We should chat soon.
Best,
I first found out about Music Hack Day just a few days ago, via the comments of a post I published to Music Think Tank a few days ago. Some of the stuff they are experimenting is just downright cool, and I'm excited to see if any of their experiments pan out and become lucrative business opportunities.
Contact me anytime. You can find me on twitter at: @xentek or by email: hello at xentek.net
thanks!
Hack Day was an eye opener for me..a non programmer. All these guys (and 2 or 3 girls) were down to earth and super passionate about their art, coding.
I'll be interested to see what comes out of the community as well. I'm expecting a lot.
How's school? Are you done now?
School is over…and I'm definitely going to miss Penn State. I'll be starting work for a boutique music management firm in NYC as their digital marketer/digital label manager guy…im psyched.
Thanks Eric. I guess the second “T” fell off with all of the editing and
spell check. Very interested in your work with Xentek. We should chat soon.
Best,
Kevin