Cornstalks Demo Night: Hollrback demo by Gabe Kangas (Video)

Hollrback founder Gabe Kangas presented his company’s context-specific, event-based contact-management system. That description, Kangas said, is “a fancy way of saying that when you meet people, we’re going to try to take care of making that information useful to you.” Technical difficulties prevented us from recording Kangas’ presentation on Demo Night, but he was kind…

(Left, Gabe Kangas of Hollrback at Cornstalks Demo Night. Photo by Danny Schreiber)

This is the last post in an eight-post series recapping the demonstrations that took place at Cornstalks Demo Night on March 31. To learn more about the event, see our post, “Cornstalks ‘Demo Night’ happening next Thursday, March 31.”

Hollrback founder Gabe Kangas presented his company’s context-specific, event-based contact-management system. That description, Kangas said, is “a fancy way of saying that when you meet people, we’re going to try to take care of making that information useful to you.”

Technical difficulties prevented us from recording Kangas’ presentation on Demo Night, but he was kind enough to record another version for us. A few highlights from Kangas’ original presentation:

  • Hollrback was designed to address a problem Kangas frequently encountered. Said Kangas: “I went to events, I met people, I got business cards that said ‘attorney’ on them” but lacked information about other aspects of that attorney — for instance, that the attorney is also in a band — that could have been vital to the interaction. “Why can’t I have that information?” Kangas wondered.
  • To accommodate the exchange of that sort of context-specific information, Hollrback allows for the creation of multiple virtual cards — one for John Doe the attorney, another for John Doe the musician and a third, perhaps, for John Doe the little league coach. 
  • In case the virtual card isn’t enough to cue a user’s memory, Hollrback also enables users to tag contacts with pertinent details, which Kangas illustrated. “I can tag someone as developer,” he said. “I can tag someone as awesome.”
  • Using two phones, Kangas illustrated Hollrback’s ability to scan contact information from another phone using a QR reader. “The idea,” he said, “is to make that quick and useful and manageable.”
  • Kangas demonstrated how to use Hollrback’s web interface, which allows the organization and further categorization of the information acquired via mobile device. Kangas said the online interface is the most useful part of what Hollrback offers. “Information,” he said, “needs to be manageable later.”

Video from Gabe Kangas on Vimeo

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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