To showcase the power of the Internet of Things for General Electric at SXSW 2012, we transformed a vintage 74-year-old refrigerator into the GE Social Fridge—a fully automated, internet-connected beer dispenser. I led the technical design, mechanical automation, and IoT infrastructure for the project. My team retrofitted the heavy legacy appliance with a custom electronic magnetic lock and a motorized door-actuation system. My team then built the low-latency software pipeline that monitored location-based social check-ins in real time; as soon as a threshold of 10 concurrent guest check-ins was hit, the system automatically unlocked and swung the door open to reward the crowd.