THREE SOUTH BAY LOCALS ARE GRAND PRIZE WINNERS AT COMCAST NBCUNIVERSAL HACKATHON IN SUNNYVALE

From Comcast California and NBC Universal

SUNNYVALE, CA - Last weekend, nearly 200 developers participated in the 5th Comcast NBCUniversal Hackathon in Sunnyvale, hacking for 24 straight hours to develop new forms of storytelling inspired by emerging technology – 41 teams were formed, 49 prototypes were built and four prizes were awarded.

Teams were asked to tackle the following three innovative challenges that impact the way we interact with media:

1. Connected Car Challenge: Create unique Connected Car experiences that engage the driver and passengers with their vehicle and make the driving experience easier, more fun, or more informative.

2. Content Finds Consumer (CFC) Challenge: Develop a system to use emerging technologies—like artificial intelligence and machine learning—to deliver relevant and interesting content directly to consumers based on their changing interests, context, circumstances like time of day, location, weather, life stages, etc.

3. Universal Pictures Challenge: Build a platform or an experience that lets fans take video, imagery, sound and 3D art from their favorite movie and personalize it. Create ways to generate excitement about the movie, compelling moviegoers to engage with the movie and buy tickets and/or purchase the movie for home entertainment.

After 24 straight hours of hacking, eight judges evaluated all 49 prototypes and selected the category winners.

FitCraft, winner of the Universal Pictures Challenge, leverages the power of movie storytelling to enhance your fitness experience, allowing users to gamify their workout to feel the training pressure of their favorite characters from the most thrilling movies! Members of the FitCraft team include three San Jose locals – Susan Zell, Meng Zhou and Jingsha Luo – along with M Asynaps from Santa Monica. Judges were so blown away by FitCraft they awarded them the Grand Prize winners!

Winners for the additional categories included:

· MobileMinded (Connected Car Challenges) – The NBCUniversal Commute app gives the audience access to the company’s content on an entirely new platform: the connected car. Drivers are able to learn about the latest show and movie releases from NBCUniversal through voice commands.

· Flixer (CFC Challenge) – A matchmaker between users and their content! Flixer ingests TV and Movie descriptions and creates personality profiles for them. Users’ personalities are analyzed through Watson Engine and through a custom algorithm matches each user to best content by showing a compatibility percentage.