American Airlines - Wearable Hackathon

American Airlines - Wearable Hackathon

Recognizing it is better to team up with the creative and technology classes to co-create new applications as technology is evolving at a rapid pace, American Airlines has partnered with innovation platform Wearable World to organize the Wearable Hackaton event , which saw 200 creative techies make their way to San Francisco on June 6 and 7 to work directly with American’s development team, hardware and API partners to create the next app for wearable devices such as smart watches and interactive glasses, for trial on American Airlines.

Partners in the Wearable Hackaton include IBM, AT&T, Pebble, Gogo, The Weather Channel, MasterCard, Citibank, Nod Labs, Plantronics, Deloitte, and San Francisco International Airport.

In the first round, which took place on June 6th and 7th, participating teams spent 24 hours designing, prototyping, coding, and testing their applications. Expert mentors, sponsors, and API providers helped teams fine-tune and code their ideas throughout the event. Judges then rated team pitches and selected five teams to advance to round two.

The winners of round one now have 30 days to finish their projects before meeting with American Airlines customers and employees at San Francisco Airport. Two members from each team will also board AA’s new transcontinental A321 service to New York on July 11th to test their app using in-air WiFi while communicating with team members at SFO airport. Upon landing, American’s top customers will participate in deciding the winner.