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Here are the great things that were created at 88Nine's first hackathon

88nine hackathon

This past Sunday, 88Nine Radio Milwaukee hosted its first-ever hackathon.  For those who aren't familiar with hackathons, it is an event that brings together people with various backgrounds to solve a problem by using technology.

The purpose of the event is to bring different creatives together to collaborate, to get a better understanding of each other ‘scenes’, to learn about technology, and to improve skills.

Thanks to our sponsors - Northwestern Mutual, PKWARE, Fuel Cafe, and Stone Creek Coffee and our partner, RokkinCat.

At 88Nine's hackathon, we focused on three topic areas – 88Nine related projects, Local Music, and Storytelling. About 30 folks took part and work on several projects.

Check out the projects below.

Project Title: WhatDaSong

Project Description: QRcode used in events and concerts where people can find out the name of the song that is playing in real time and get to the 88nine playlist.

Team Members: Ana Fandiño, Mary Ejiwale, Sophia Rahman

Project Title: 88Nine Alexa Skill #1

Project Description: We developed an Alexa skill that performs the following features:
Ask Alexa:
to play/pause/resume/stop 88.9 FM
to know what happened in Milwaukee this week : This plays 88Nine's current week's story.
to know what song is currently playing : Alexa responds with the song and artist's name.
to add this song to Spotify playlist
to know when is this artist coming to Milwaukee: We use BandsInTown API to get the details.
to know the upcoming event for the artist.

In addition, we also developed analytics back-end for admin to monitor features like:
1. Number of alexa users that have installed this skill
2. How frequent (/day /month) do these users listen to 88Nine.
3. Number of alexa users who uninstalled the skill : Find reason by analyzing History of events

Team Members: Shashwat Parashar (GE Healthcare), Adithya Balasubramanian (GE Healthcare)

Technology Used: Java, AWS (Lambda, DynamoDB), APIs: BandsInTown, Spotify

Project Title: Google Play integration with 88nine App

Project Description: Add link to search google music (or other services) for a song from the playlist

Team Members: Kenneth Klatt

Project Title: WildNotes

Project Description: Help local artists engage with local audiences by "dropping notes" for fans. Fans gather notes to gain access to discounts, free tracks or other artist-related content.

Team Members: Travis Shears, Steven Price, Emmett Wesolowski, Ray Toler, Michael Paoletti, Loren Foster,
Ivan Rahman

Project Link: https://bitbucket.org/BTBTravis/wildnotes/overview

Mockups

Project Title: Radio Milwaukee Ballot system web app

Project Description: A web app that makes easier for listeners to submit entries and for Radio
Milwaukee Music Awards, top 100 albums of the year, listener approved, and more.

Team Members: Judah Wright, Eric Lutley, Joey Kilmer

Project Link: https://bitbucket.org/BTBTravis/wildnotes/overview

Project Title: 88Nine Alexa Skill #2

Project Description: Alexa Skill to play both main + local streams; tell you what's currently playing.

Team Members: Steve Johnson, Nathan Kawatski

Project Link: https://github.com/deepfriedfilth/88nine-alexa-skill

Director of Digital | Radio Milwaukee