The Bake-Off Party Recap

The first ever SmartFile Platform Bake-Off has come and gone. We asked Indiana college students to develop any kind of application (mobile, tablet, desktop, SaaS, etc.) that interacts with the newly released SmartFile API in only 50 days. These student teams from all over the state worked hard to complete their projects but only 9 would qualify for the finals. These 9 would then pitch their projects to a panel of judges, which would determine the top 3. Later that same day, those top teams would pitch to a Bake-Off Party audience that would vote to decide the winner. It was a long day, but it all started with the judging panel…

Our judges were some of the top business and innovative leaders in Indianpolis, coming from companies like TinderBox, KA+A, Right On Interactive, and The Basement. They listened and observed the teams give their 5 minute pitches, trying to illustrate the importance and innovation of their application. Each project was judged on 5 criteria; innovation, utility, use of the SmartFile Platform, design, and user experience. The judges had a very hard time separating the cream of the crop, so hard in fact that a top 3 could not be determined. Instead, the group decided there would be a top 4!

Later that night, all the teams had to wait in suspense during our Bake-Off Party to see who would have to re-pitch their applications to an entire audience and persuade their vote. So after fun, festivities, food, and (of course) cupcakes, it was time to really get the party started and announce the top teams. These 4 teams bravely presented their applications to large audience of tech enthusiasts, hoping that everyone would realize the importance of what they had created and vote for them. Team Dangling Pointers (Rose-Hulman), Team Winnovation (Purdue University), Team Octodog (IUPUI), and Team Paradox Duo (IUPUI) all did amazing jobs pitching their projects.

The audience voted and the winner was announced…Team Octodog, represented by Ani Chan and Manpreet Singh from IUPUI, were crowned the champions and awarded 0,000! Their application, SmartClip, is a Google Chrome extension that clips sections of websites and saves them for future viewing. These clips are stored in your SmartFile account and converted into PDFs for achieve. You can also access the clips in your browser through the Chrome extension. An amazing application by two amazing students. Congratulations to Team Octodog and all the other student teams that participated.

SmartFile wanted to host an event like the Bake-Off not only encourage development and innovation by Indiana college students but to also help promote our SmartFile Platform and newly released API. We also announced at the Bake-Off party that starting that day, all developers could use the SmartFile Platform for free! That’s right, you can get a free developer account and use the SmartFile platform for a variety of development and business opportunities. I urge you to learn more about the SmartFile platform and build something as innovative as our Bake-Off teams did.

Stay tuned for the 2014 SmartFile Platform Bake-Off, where we will do even bigger and better!

SmartFile is a business file mangement platform that gives you more control, compliance and security.

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