The IT Nerd

Two Ryerson students were the winners of this weekend’s latest hackathon, HackuWeather. The event was a joint partnership between Toronto tech startup TribalScale and AccuWeather, the world’s largest and fastest growing weather company, which saw 10 teams compete over the course of the weekend.

The winning team, consisting of Satchel French and Aditya Surabi, both third year engineering students at Ryerson University, brought both hardware and software together to create their app, Feels. Feels uses the weather to customize your home’s ambience. Products such as Philips Hue lighting are automatically adjusted based on the weather, along with custom streaming music playlists from 8tracks that change with conditions outside. 

Three finalists were also selected, with the Tempus team coming in second place. Tempus was a team of four that included a Grade 10 student from Markville Secondary School. They created a tool to forecast weather, and potential driving conditions, along a driver’s route using Google Maps. The app can recommend good places to take a pitstop based on the weather and even send warnings when conditions become severe.

The other two finalists were M50, an event planning tool that helps users select an activity based on current weather conditions, and Coatcheck, an Amazon Alexa skill that allows users to create a virtual closet with their favourite clothes based on the weather. First and second place received a cash prize and all four teams received access to the AccuWeather API.

I’ve written about Toronto based TribalScale recently, and I’ve got an update on them that I’d like to share. TribalScale yesterday announced it is working with Silicon Valley-based Athos, building out their coach-side web-app, helping to change the way athletes train.

So who are Athos? They are a wearable company that develops new innovations in the connected fitness clothing space. Fast Company named Athos the fourth most innovative fitness company in the world in 2015. They produce exercise gear that tracks muscle exertion, balance and heart rate to improve overall fitness. They’ve tapped TribalScale to expand the scope of their technology by developing a coach- facing web app to manage athletes within a team or program.  The technology provides coaches and trainers with a more holistic view of their team, encouraging coaches to pay equal attention to an average athlete as compared to their stars or underperformers. Coaches are now able to create new programs and assign it to a team or group. They can then go into the list of participants in a program and tailor certain aspects to accommodate for an individual’s needs.

This is a big step forward for TribalScale and shows that what I said about them was accurate. Which is that I would keep an eye on them because they’re on the cutting edge of tech related to the Internet Of Things and mobile platforms.

TribalScale is a Toronto based tech startup that specializes in mobile devices and the Internet of Things. They’ve been around since November 2015 and have quickly gone from six to over 40 people.

So, at this point you’re likely wondering why I am writing about this company. The Internet of Things is growing rapidly. Today we have light switches and cars on the Internet. But in the future, we’ll have billions of devices on on the Internet. That will give the right company who is able to leverage this technology the ability to really do some amazing things. Not only that, mobile is rapidly becoming THE platform of choice for people. What we don’t have at present are companies who could leverage one or both of these platforms to make compelling experiences for the average end user. TribalScale changes that by being the only company can do both as far as I am aware. Let me give you two examples of how they’ve been able to do that:

• TribalScale is responsible for the ABC News app for iOS and Android. I tested both of of the apps and they have a very rich media experience combining video and text in a very seamless and slick fashion.
• TribalScale is also responsible for a PGA Tour Alexa Skill for the Amazon Echo. Simply ask the echo about the leaderboard of an in progress PGA Tour event or a specific player, and the Echo responds.

So, let’s recap. A company that’s been around for a few months has already done some cool work for a major professional sport organization and a major US TV network that is owned by Disney. That’s not minor and makes it clear that this is a company on the rise. After all, if the company that brought you Mickey Mouse trusts them, you should too. It also explains why they are adding employees as fast as they are.

Another sign that this is a company that is on the rise is that this company really has some interesting ways that they work. For example, they are an Agile development environment using a from of Agile development called Extreme Programming. An example of this is two developers working on a project with only one computer with a pair of mirrored monitors between them. That’s to encourage collaboration, rapid and quality software development.

Finally, the team at TribalScale can work on their own projects so that they can learn and become versed in new and advanced technologies that they can leverage for customer projects. For example, I saw other projects that take advantage of IBM Watson APIs as well as Amazon Echo Alexa Skills and I was really impressed.

I spoke to CEO Sheetal Jaitly and I found him to an energetic and engaging person. He’s been around the block having worked for USRobotics right out of high school on the Palm Pilot launch in the 1990’s. When he joined Xtreme Labs, as the Director of Business Development for Media, he quickly expanded the media vertical for the organization and became a well-known figure within the industry. He really believes that TribalScale is on the verge on something big, and so is Toronto. In the case of Toronto, Sheetal feels that the innovation corridor between Toronto and Waterloo Ontario is going to be as big or bigger than Silicon Valley. All that has to happen is that companies in the innovation corridor have to “play nice with each other”. I was really impressed by him and I have to say that I too think that they’re on the verge to something big.

TribalScale is a company on the rise. I would not only keep an eye on them because they’re on the cutting edge, but I would consider them if I wanted to do something really cool and unique on mobile platforms or with the Internet Of Things. They can really help you make your company stand out in the crowd.