Appapalooza was a HUGE success! We had 22 middle school teams and 6 high school teams complete the 12-week curriculum and ‘pitch’ their app in front of an audience at Appapalooza on Sunday, May 3 at the Minneapolis Convention Center. The house was full with over 400 supporters. The energy in the room was palpable. There was dancing, singing, cheers and tears of joy! All of the girls totally rocked their pitches and we are so incredibly proud of all of our teams!
Based upon the number of Minnesota entries, we are able to send three middle school teams and one high school team to the global semi-final round. Our 23 judges followed our global judging rubric to select the following Technovation[MN] Appapalooza winners:
Middle School Regional Champions:
Mayo Freetime built by Furst Class from Kasson-Mantorville, Rochester
Access196 built by Falcon Ridge Middle School Team Apple Valley
School@Home built by the Nerdettes from Central Middle School, Norwood Young America
High School Regional Champion:
AbroadNet built by Technovation[MN]-IT from Trinity High School at River Ridge and Connections Academy
Best Technical App – ShelterMe built by Escape the Cage from Minnetonka High School, Minnetonka
Best Entrepreneurial App – The Babysitters Guide to Success built by Computer Glitz from Dakota Hills Middle School, Eagan
Best Pitch – Hurt Alert built by M-KATS, BDPA, Rochester
Best Pitch – Neighbor Chat built by The Weasties at Minnetonka Middle School East & West, Minnetonka
Best Pitch – Give & Take built by Fab 4 Below, Valley View Middle School, Edina
Best Pitch – Little Helper built by Girls Coding, Bunch of friends
Code Savvy, Best Technical – DogTrax built by Victoria TechTrax from Chaska Middle School East, Chaska
Code Savvy, Best Technical – UNITE built by CRCS Lady Warrior from Cedar Riverside Community School, Minneapolis
World Pitch 2015 will be in June and will feature a total of 10 international finalists. 6 of those finalists will be from the high school division, and the remaining 4 will be from the middle school division. These top 10 teams are flown to Silicon Valley where they pitch their app to VC’s in the hopes of winning $10,000 in seed funding and help commercializing their app on the Google Play Store!
Congratulations to our 2015 Technovation[MN] winners and participants and to all those who helped them get there!
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