Originally posted at: Be a Part of the Summer of Smart Hackathon in San Francisco | Dutiee

GAFFTA Summer of Smart

San Francisco, CA: GAFFTA provided opportunity for Hacking for Public Health and Food Spaces.

This is my first hackathon as a participant, after attending over a dozen of them in my life. Day one of the Summer of Smart by San Francisco’s Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (@GAFFTA) included people who came to hear about innovations in the public health and food space. The excitement started with people forming teams to come up with technology to solve problems in food/public health sectors. The mix of people included techie, non-techie, and others – created a diverse group of people who set out to collaborate and create fantastic solutions.

The night was filled with people sampling different team and idea options, and heated debates about the future of their teams ideas. A few folks ended up changing their team after midnight, while certain teams stayed together. The team I joined was working on creating an application that could promote the Kijani Grows site for a tweeting garden. The diverse group of people covered developers, idea sorts, business, media, and arts folks, made for the experience unlike any other hackathon I have been to as it allowed me to see what “real folks” outside the technology sector can come up with to fix problems in their communities.

The Hackathon is meant to go on until Sunday. If you happen to be around this weekend in San Francisco and want to participate or observe

a real hackathon taking place, then please check out the Summer of Smart site and feel free to drop by tomorrow (Aug 21) from 4 to 6 pm to view the final presentations at 998 Market St., San Francisco.