Huge turnout (100+ hackers/designers) and great ideas came out of the Photo Hack Day event organized by EyeEM in partnership with Photolia and Google in Berlin. The dark lighting and the lack of proper introduction/facilitation from a presenter made all the demo’s very hard to follow. Geeks need more support to be able to present and sometime the technical value was difficult to understand for marketing people, as the business value eluded most of the techies in attendance.

Lesson for the future: if you require the teams to present in under 120 seconds, teach them how to do it and help them if they don’t use the time effectively, don’t congratulate them if they rush offstage after just 30 seconds leaving the audience dazed and confused (!!!).

What I could understand of all the demos is summarized, not without personal comments, in the sketch below.

Click to make bigger

Kudos to Photoration and Ambeer who won 1st and 2nd place. My winners are:

• Impossible Loops for concept & overall quality (password: photohackday)
• Ambeer for empathic ability and presentation skills
• Snapcat for simple fun and animal-mobile interaction.

For more info you can browse the wiki of the event.