Opensports - Organizing Pickup Games Isn't A Contradiction In Terms.

In 2014, James Gibbons was building BlackBerry apps while living with a friend who had couch space in New York City.

- Michelle Cheng

In his free time, the University of Waterloo computer science grad would try to organize pickup basketball games in the city but found it difficult. He didn’t know his neighbors, and everyone had crazy schedules. Biking around Manhattan one day, Gibbons asked some basketball players about using an app to organize games. Good idea, they said. His market research done, Gibbons started writing the code. “The nature of pickup,” he says, “made it easy for people to join without a long-term commitment or having to worr