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Ferry Leaves Seattle Geeks High and Dry

App developers left landlocked because the event’s boat was out of service.

What was supposed to be a day of brainstorming and computer programming on the high seas turned into tech networking on land for a group of Seattle-area app enthusiasts.

Geeks on a Ferry was to bring software developers, entrepreneurs and designers together on Tuesday, Aug. 14, to work on their entries for the Evergreen Apps Challenge, a public-private contest aiming to building sustainable civic apps.

But the event was sunk by one big problem. The ferry was out of service.

The event was canceled, and instead 25 participants met informally at a three-hour networking event, said Sabra Schneider, Seattle’s director of electronic communications.

The original plan was for the coders to take an afternoon ride from Seattle to Bremerton, during which they would work on their entries. The participants would have had access to free Wi-Fi onboard.

Once the ferry docked in Bremerton, they were going to spend the evening hearing presentations about building applications with Socrata open data and Esri GIS data. Then they would ride back to Seattle.

The Evergreen Apps Challenge is sponsored by the city of Seattle, King County and Washington state, along with support from several tech companies.

The sponsors plan to reach out to attendees and the public to see if there is interest in rescheduling the event.

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