Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley’s new fiancee might be a fashionista, but that’s not the only reason he’s checking in at Fashion Week in New York City, which starts today. Crowley judged the first-ever Fashion Hackathon last weekend, and will give the tech keynote at a Decoded Fashion event next Thursday (designer Zac Posen will give the fashion keynote).
For the hackathon, Conde Nast invited app developers to hear from a panel of designers about the industry’s most pressing tech needs. PCMag.com reports today:
“This past weekend, dozens of hopefuls filled coworking space Alley NYC for a weekend of coding. It was preceded by The Fashion Brief, where a panel of fashion industry professionals expressed their technology needs and laid out pain points for the industry as a whole. The brief was moderated by [Aliza] Licht [SVP of global communications at Donna Karan International] and included designer Rachel Roy; Farryn Weiner, global director of social media at Michael Kors; Nathaniel Catanio, co-founder of Sideways; Kelly McCauley, director of communications for the CFDA; and Uri Minkoff, co-founder and CEO of Rebecca Minkoff.”
Designers asked for apps that could help with transportation and logistics, communicating with non-English speaking manufacturers, big-fashion-data mining and analysis, PCMag.com reports, as well as a hand-held personal stylist and a “Jetsons closet that showers, primps, and dresses its owner.”
Coding began after lunch, and was scheduled to run throughout the night, with breaks for mentoring and feedback sessions,snacks, dinner, 10:00 pm music and gourmet cookie break and a midnight snack. Submissions were due at 11:00 am the next day, and five finalists were announced later that afternoon. The publisher promises $10,000 to the winning app, to be announced February 14.
Finalist and semifinalist apps are listed on the Decoded Fashion website.
