On the first day of class in spring 2009, when design graduate student René Pinnell was assigned to take something occurring in nature and turn it into a product — better known as “biomimicry” in the design world — he thought of a hurricane.
He likened the complicated buildup of the storm to that of a party and, wanting to streamline the process of event planning, came up with the concept of Hurricane Party.
Hurricane Party is an iPhone application that helps create a spontaneous social event by allowing the user to broadcast a potential get-together, locate friends, pinpoint event locations and get the ball rolling.
“[A hurricane is] kind of like a party; people come, but if it’s not the right mix of people or you run out of drinks, it sucks, it never happens,” said Anderson Price, a second year business school graduate student who monitors the financial side of the app. “But if you have the perfect mix of the right people — men, women, drinks — you have the perfect party: it rages longer, just the way a hurricane happens.”
Pinnell discussed the idea further with Eric Katerman, who recently graduated from UT with a Ph.D. in math, and Avram Dodson, who is enrolled in Columbia University, deciding it would work as an iPhone app that provides a way to broadcast how and where you are going to party.
In May they applied to Capital Factory, a business incubator in Austin, and were accepted as one of five new businesses from 250 applications from across the country, being the only Austin-based company.
Read the full story at the Daily Texan.
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