Last weekend, me and Jonathan Chan spent a straight thirty hours working on SoundBoard, a crowd-driven music player, and had a blast! Our app won second place by a single vote, and we won VIP tickets to the TedX - UChicago event. It’s been a hectic week, but it’s satisfying to see a project emerge out of a weekend of feverish coding.

Here’s how SoundBoard works. You, the host of some kind of party, want good music playing but also want crowd participation, but don’t have time or money to hire a DJ. Head over to SoundBoard, login with an Rdio account on any modern browser, choose an appropriate hashtag for your shindig, and let SoundBoard start playing songs! People can tweet things like “#sb #bestpartayevah radiohead” and then Radiohead gets added to the pool of artists from which SoundBoard picks songs. Leave the SoundBoard playing while connected to a TV and you have a great, participatory music experience!

Here’s the link: SoundBoard. Cheers!