RANGELY I Rangely locals Andy Key and Heather Welsh have paired up with other tech savvy entrepreneurs from the Western Slope to participate in the GoCode Colorado Competition where they recently placed in the top two and are now headed to the finals.
GoCode Colorado is a competitive opportunity intended to bring entrepreneurs together with web developers with the goal of creating an app designed to solve a problem for the business. Developers are required to use open data, that is data or information sets anyone can use without copyright, patent and other restrictions, in a three stage challenge. The open data used often includes things such as, demographics, public health information and nearby recreation opportunities.
Welsh, who is the owner and senior developer at Kaffeinated Kodemonkey, encouraged Key to get involved and bring his desire to learn coding and business experience.
“I’m quickly learning how many different expertise there are in creating a website or app. In our case, Heather, who is an expert in web page development, can collaborate with back-end developers (experts in creating servers and databases) to create a really powerful application for business owners,” said Key.
Key and Welsh’s team, Team Kodemonkey, created PETROMatch, an app designed to work with the oil and gas community. “The intent is to put idle equipment and/or service companies to work, by finding where activity is taking place,” said Key.
The final competition will take place May 24 in Denver where Team Kodemonkey will be up against nine other teams. The three winners selected at the final competition will receive $25,000 and a one-year contract to develop the app with the State of Colorado.
Key is hopeful the event will continue to grow and gain more interest from businesses and web developers.
“This event brings the brightest minds in web development together to prove the usefulness of open public data. I would highly encourage people who have a problem they need solved to jump into this next year and let these guys go to work. It’s so impressive to watch first hand.”
