We just finished what I’m calling the “alpha run” of journey log, a system for logging runners running Journey to the End of the Night/SurviveDC-style games. There were a fair number of data issues, but I think it’s a really cool combination of mobile app (Android and iPhone versions) for recording and web app for storing and visualizing runner patterns during the night. You can see visualizations of the checkpoints, chasers, and runners (with individual runners getting their own pages). The web visualizations are done with a rails/mysql backend, using flot, jit, and Google maps javascript libraries.

In short: we won!

I took part in the first Education Startup Weekend this past weekend, a great event where you try to create a viable startup over the course of 54 hours. You can read the NPR story here or a great writeup from one of my teammates here. My team created DemoLesson.com, a career listing site for teachers where every teacher has a teaching video, so that school administrators doing the hiring can get real information much earlier in the process. You can see a splash page here. The concept is pretty straightforward, but there’s a real need to be able to see teachers teach before flying them out for an in-person interview and demo lesson. I liken it to coding interviews for developers: you want to be able to see the person doing what it is you’re actually hiring them for. There was a lot of positive feedback from Teach For America, the charter school administrators we talked to, and the teachers we interviewed. The weekend was also a competition, and out of 14 competing teams, the judges thought ours was the most viable. It was a great team, a great experience, and a lot of fun.