Myrtle Beach on the map; wins Foursquare Hackathon NASDAQ grand prize

update at the bottom...

Myrtle Beach area app developers gathered last weekend to participate in a “hackathon”, a global contest that challenges developers to take an idea from concept to a complete functional product in one weekend. The 2 projects submitted were GFScale and The Reward Board.

On Tuesday afternoon, NASDAQ and Foursquare selected The Reward Board out of 80 other international submissions. The Grand Prize they received includes a paid trip to New York City later this year to ring the closing bell at NASDAQ in recognition of their innovative idea and quick execution.

Cowork MYR, a coworking space in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, hosted the event at their location. Participants all over the globe simultaneously created projects and completed them within 48 hours. The only requirements were no work could be done prior to the start of the event and it must integrate the services from Foursquare. Myrtle Beach had more registered participants than other larger cities such as Portland, Atlanta, Prague, and Stockholm.

The winning project, called The Reward Board, was created by Cowork MYR members Joe Clarke and Mikkel Green with contributing efforts from Kevin Young, Rocky Dohmen, and Mike Schroll. The Reward Board is a self-contained graphical display at a retail location that shows visitors that have recently checked in using the the Foursquare application. Both new and frequent visitors are rewarded at checkin with dynamically printed coupons. Managers can specify many parameters to control the discounts and when the coupons are printed.

Even though the members have shared the Cowork MYR space, this is the first time The Reward Board team members have worked directly together on a project. Cowork MYR regularly hosts similar events to encourage collaboration and explore new opportunities.

 ”I couldn’t be more proud of our members”, says Paul Reynolds, President of Cowork MYR. “This is truly an ideal representation of what Cowork MYR is all about and confirms that we have talented innovators and entrepreneurs in the area. This is just the start of many wonderful things that will come out of our space starting in 2013.”

Notable quotes from Foursquare:

“We were especially impressed by the strong showings at non-official sites in Madison, WI (hosted bySnowshoe), Myrtle Beach, SC (hosted by CoWork MYR), Tokyo, and Los Angeles.”

”Reward Board allows businesses on Foursquare to display real-time check-ins on a monitor in their store or restaurant. Reward Board also shows the current mayor, and a site-specific leaderboard. Business managers can set up tiered rewards and specials for customers to unlock, and even hook up a thermal printer to automatically print receipts. A few of the Reward Board creators Joe Clarke, Mikkel Green, Kevin Young, and Rocky Dohmen will be flown from Myrtle Beach, SC to New York City later this year to ring the NASDAQ bell (and get their faces on TV!). Plus, their app will be featured on the Times Square billboard.”

Cowork MYR is owned by Cubic Phase, the parent company for TheDigitel Myrtle Beach.  The tech scene in the Grand Strand is heating up and we couldn't be happier. To see more on local start-ups, visit our topic page.


Update January 11th: WPDE News Channel 15 caught up with the creators of the The Reward Board app, you can read their write-up about the duo here and watch the broadcast below.

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