The Return of Catherine the Great

Back in July, I wrote here about how I hoped everyone had a Catherine Clinch in their life.  Catherine is a good pal who I refer to as Mother Nature who just envelops people to offer help and support and advice, and it is the wise person who listens when she says, "You know what you should do?"  (Though you should listen with a filter, because the suggestions come a file a minute...)

Anyway, it was wonderful to see Catherine help herself over the weekend.

As a bit of background, a year ago, Catherine started entering business-sponsored “hackathons” that are organized around the country to develop apps.  She's now part of that circuit and gets invitations to them.  What's so unlikely about all this is that she doesn't have a clue about how to write computer code, but as I said she does know about great ideas, and is such a Mother Nature figure that she can often network with others who embrace her, even though she stands out at these events of basically college-aged tech geeks like a odd fish.

Catherine recently teamed up with a development partner.  And it was at their first try that, this past weekend, they placed second in the AT&T Internet of Things (IOT) Hackathon.  This qualified them to compete in Las Vegas during CES with 7 other regional winners for the top prize of $20,000.  So, a big hubba!

I don’t know how circumspect I’m supposed to be about what the app actually is, so I’ll err on the side of caution.  All I’ll say is that it has such great, real-world social benefit that, regardless of whether they win or even place high in the finals, I suspect they will garner interest from businesses at the event looking for products to take to market.  What happens at that point -- hey, who knows, it's out of my hands...

But when I say it is is the wise person who listens to Catherine Clinch when she says, "You know what you should do?" -- honest, I really mean it.