Dropbox Sponsors Video Hack Day in New York
Dropbox attended Video Hack Day in New York City as a sponsor, hosted by Ziggeo at General Assembly. The event drew developers working on video-focused projects ranging from accessibility tools for the visually impaired to real-time video sharing apps for karaoke and sales pitches. After a full day of hacking, participants presented their projects to the audience on Saturday night.
Dropbox awarded its prize for Best Use of the Dropbox API to VidComb, an app designed to streamline collaborative video creation. VidComb also took home the Crowd Favorite award, earning the team portable JBL speakers from Dropbox as well as $1,000 in cash from Video Hack Day.
How VidComb Works
During their demo, the VidComb team illustrated the app's use case with a surprise birthday video scenario. A user creates a project indicating whose birthday it is, then invites friends to contribute. Each collaborator records a video or uploads an existing clip from Dropbox. VidComb automatically assembles and renders all contributions into a single finished montage, eliminating manual coordination and editing.
The team behind VidComb consists of designer Marilyn Chew and developers Mikhail Gorbachev and Zhi An Ng. Chew and Ng are students at the National University of Singapore, currently in New York for internships through the NUS Overseas College program. They connected with Gorbachev at the hackathon itself; all three are experienced hackathon participants. They shared a mutual interest in surprising friends and frustration with the tedious process of coordinating group videos. Future plans for VidComb include adding support for music and editing before final download, with the project's source available on GitHub.
Dropbox API Demo at the Event
Alongside awarding prizes, Dropbox presented a short talk on its API. The demo focused on retrieving links for streaming video content via the /media endpoint and links for shareable, downloadable video content using /shares. The demonstration resulted in a simple web page and a Python application integrating with Dropbox, with source code shared as a gist. The sample app was used during the presentation to generate links to a video created specifically for Video Hack Day.
Acknowledging the Participants
Dropbox expressed appreciation for the organizers and all teams that incorporated Dropbox integrations into their projects. The company noted how impressive it was that each group accomplished so much within a single day of hacking.
