On 20-21 September, we were delighted to host the very first Face Reading Hackathon in Amsterdam, together with leading institutions like UvA, A Lab, Appsterdam and ACE Venture Lab.

The purpose of the 32-hour F.A.C.E. Hackathon was to bring together a number of creative and talented people to develop smart, interactive applications using our Face Analysis Technologies.

The weekend event took place at the A Lab building, in Amsterdam-North, a great location for such a gathering.

We enjoyed seeing the enthusiasm and passion of the participants playing either with our F.A.C.E. API or with our two SDK’s: CrowdSight, the crowd face analysis software toolkit, and InSight, the individual face analysis software toolkit.

Bringing visionary minds and innovative technology together in the same room is the perfect cocktail to brew awesome ideas and applications. That was our hackathon!

Participants used the potential of our technologies to create exciting real-time applications which make use of such features as the users’ facial expressions, gender, age, eye location and head pose.

It was exciting to witness the applications taking shape and see the final outcome.

Nice examples of how our technology can contribute to the fields of Market Research and Advertisement were applications dedicated to improve consumers’ experience while shopping online, by adjusting the ad content to their gender and point/time of attention.

Other smartphone applications stood out by their originality, creativity and commercial potential.

The first prize of our Hackathon went to Dwight Gunning with the app “Instagram Faces”. This smart data aggregator makes use of the F.A.C.E. API and is able to measure data on the social channel Instagram, grouping users by features, with the potential to analyse much more.

The Winner App makes best use of the Sightcorp technologies and features. It clearly shows how Face Analysis Technologies can create impact to companies in general, helping them to understand users’ behavior and interest in their products and brand online, or to simply understand their profile.

Our first hackathon gave us valuable inputs in terms of software performance and business opportunities. Organizing a hackathon was also a learning experience for us. We look forward to using the acquired knowledge in the next challenge, which we are planning for next year. Stay tuned!

A big thank you to everyone who participated in our F.A.C.E. Hackathon in Amsterdam. You guys rocked!