App Camp - OK Event, Cool Apps & Really Shitty Pitches (well, most of them)

RoboCop - one of the apps developed in App Camp 2012

App Camp'12 - the biggest mobile apps hackathon in Baltics finished on Sunday evening  (11th of November, 2012)  Folks who are really into apps have gathered from whole Lithuania and neighbor countries to work on 58 new mobile applications (probably even more, but that's how many teams registered to pitch their app).

- Photos from the event - App Camp Facebook event - #AppCamp tweets - Video coming soon.

The title basically sums up my impressions* about the event: it went well enough and had an amazing outcome - bunch of cools apps - because of awesome participants, especially hackers. And then lots and lots of really bad pitches / presentations. With few exceptions among the presentations of course, and those mostly from seasoned startup event participants.

Hacking away in App Camp 2012

So there is definitely a room for improvement for next years App Camp, even having such a great outcome. Organizers got an amazing venue in the perfect location for the event - Merchant's club. However, it appeared be double edged sword - participants constantly experienced problems with internet. Also air conditioning was certainly not the best one, especially in the conference room (was pretty bad during the opening evening). Some teams were also not happy that one night for coding was lost on Friday and teams were fully formed and started working only on Saturday. Oh and it probably would be a good idea to have food for participants available in the venue during the actual hackathon - it doesn't make sense to gather the best hackers we have for less than 30-something hours of coding and then loose precious time for looking where to eat and walking there. Anyways, but enough of feedback for App Camp team and Lithuanian style ranting - event was a success, good job App Camp team! :)

This App Camp also had the youngest participants ever.
The future of Lithuanian Startups as  Jaro @chomponim put it :)

App Camp managed to attract amazing technical talent (from both participant and mentor sides) and those folks really delivered. ...But what happened when they finally got on the stage... Seriously, guys - MAJORITY of you were mumbling something with really low voice while looking ALL the time at that SINGLE slide of your app. Those must be the worst pitches I have seen in... ever. Of course there were some really good exceptions and no wonder that almost all of them (good or at least better than average pitch on Sunday) won something. Guys did have very little time to prepare, but you only needed content for 90s! And still, most of you went over time and had to be stopped by moderator (I actually took notes, if you drop me a team #, I can tell you individual feedback;). And finally the overwhelming boringness... We need to do something about this. In HUB Vilnius we have been talking for a while about pitch training and after what I saw on Sunday I am certain that we need it. Lots of it actually and on constant basis. Thus, I am start HUB Vilnius Pitching Club - 1st training coming up in few weeks. If you're interested register HERE.      

The best mobile @ App Camp 2012 - KeyApp

Winners of App Camp 2012:

• The best mobile application developed at App Camp is interactive unlock system - KeyApp. The team was awarded with App Camp big prize - 3.000 EUR for the further app development and Omnitel 4G mobile internet packets.
• Trustribe, SMASH LT and Whemsy won an opportunity to pitch their ideas at Silicon Valley Comes to the Baltics on 15-16 of November, 2012.
• Triangularis team won a prize for the most innovative S-Pen oriented Android application. They created an app which distorts images in triangular manner. The team was awarded with Samsung Galaxy Note 2.
• The best Android application prize went to Tropic Mind team, who created fun and engaging game for kids called ARGH! The team was awarded with Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
• The best Windows 8 store game prize went to EyLean who created rally game which allows to take advantage of any track visible in bing Maps. The team was awarded with Samsung ATIV - SmartPC and 250.000 ad impressions on AdDuplex network.
• The best Windows Phone app prize went to Cereal Killers, they created weather forecast application. The team was awarded with Xbox 360 with Kinect.

The best pitches - Trustribe, Smash LT and Whemsy. They will also pitch in #SVC2Baltics 

• Barclays special prizes was awarded to:

1. £1500 prize was awarded to team Kung fu coders for their banking application with reimangined view of mobile banking.
2. £1000 prize was awarded to team Grey Cardinals with social app, that helps collect money for Health Associations.
3. £500 prize was awarded to team The Hive. They created mobile Air Pocket banking application.

• Addvisors SEO and AdWords workshops was awarded to teams Tag of Joy, The Hive, Jukebot, Robocop, Take On and Whemy.
• AdDuplex prize - 250.000 ad impressions was awarded to Contactimo@77Agency who created an app which allows to share your contact info and go beyond limits.

What event without epic fails? :) See how MacBook Air flies from App Camp to SVC2Baltics conference:

* Disclaimer - I actually didn't join any team nor participated full time in the event. Had to work over the weekend, thus dropped by only in the evenings. However I was in the opening evening, talked with participants, followed Twitter/Facebook feed and watched the whole closing ceremony live. If you think that something I wrote here is incorrect, please leave a comment bellow.