An AST Wins Startup Weekend

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http://www.geekwire.com/2012/aerospa...ile-app-early/

As a mechanical engineer at Boeing, Anne Marie Ketola is accustomed to working on products that may not come to market for years, even decades. And that’s one of the reasons why the Columbia University grad was so intrigued with Startup Weekend, the 54-hour coding marathon where projects are hatched and developed in the course of a weekend.

“I actually wasn’t even sure I was qualified to come to this because I only know how to code Fortran,” said Ketola, referring to the programming language used in high performance computing at her Boeing job.
It’s a good thing she showed up, encouraged to do so by friend and fellow teammate Danielle Fague. Ketola’s idea, a mobile app called Up Early, took home top honors Sunday night at Startup Weekend Women’s Edition.

Ketola has been kicking around the idea for Up Early since moving to Seattle about a year ago. Described as a smart alarm, Up Early allows users to configure the alarm only if certain conditions are met, say it’s 65 degrees and sunny or if six inches of snow fell on the pass.

The idea could go even further, say an alarm if a stock fell below a certain price. Up Early still has some development work to do before submitting the app to the Apple app store.