It’s easy to see that everyone spent a lot of time preparing for this year’s challenge. It showed in the strategy that teams took to address a number of challenging problems. It showed in the quality of software and design that was produced for each entry. It showed in the presentations and the overwhelmingly enthusiastic responses from the non-profit partners who stayed up all night with us. You may think you were tired, but imagine if you weren’t a nerd who’s spent many years in sleep-deprivation training.

I’m pretty sure the judges had to do some dice rolling to pick the winning team. On the other hand, it’s easy to say that there were 12 winning non-profits. If you think about the professional bill rate for A-list designers and developers–ignore for a minute that in any normal scenario it’d be almost impossible to assemble teams of 100% dedicated, heads-down A-list members–and multiply that out for all of the teams, this event generated almost a half million dollar’s worth of game-changing online presence for organizations that are making this world a better place.

And we did it in a weekend.

If you participated in this event and you’re reading this right now in the office, please stand up and belt out your best “w00t!” Make it loud. Don’t explain it. Just acknowledge it. You’re awesome.

Cheers,

Chris