(Photo: Coco Rocha/Instagram)

As a supermodel--and here Betabeat can only conjecture--the product you're selling, essentially, is you. Your matchstick stems, all the places you go, your cool attitude = you. Therefore, as with most celebrities (and increasingly regular humans) run-of-the-mill personal brand building on social media is directly tied to revenue.

But even if Coco Rocha's entire extended Canadian family depended on the number of her Instagram followers, you still have to respect the 24-year-old's commitment. We discovered as much this afternoon at panel run by Decoded Fashion hosted on the mouth of a runway at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.

Glamour editor-in-chief Cindi Leive, who was moderating the talk (called "Fashion and Tech Discuss the Future"), introduced Ms. Rocha by noting that she had amassed millions of followers on 13 different platforms and was "the first model to surpass 1 million followers on Google+." But Ms. Rocha doesn't just hang around in ghost towns. She also has 4 million followers in China, "where models are bigger than celebrities," through Sino Weibo and Tencent Weibo. And she's active on Vine, the Twitter-owned video sharing app that launched just last month.

"If you’re the first one on a platform, you notice your numbers will grow immensely," Ms. Rocha explained. "And Vine? There’s not many of us on there. Not a lot of models. So who you gonna pick as a model? You’ll pick me. Because I’m your only model." After that, she added, you just watch the dominos fall. "Why does she have so many numbers? I should follow her! I believe that’s how it works," she said modestly, raising and lowering her silver-rimmed stilettos from the ledge of a clear formica stool.

On @shade45 with @realsway and @karolinakurkova! Tune in now! vine.co/v/bvPbt33KXh7

— CocoRocha (@cocorocha) February 12, 2013

She also claimed to manage the enterprise by her lonesome. "My content is from me. It’s not some PR firm that’s deciding to sell other things. It’s me and my voice and I think only I know it best. Some people can pretend to be someone else and that’s okay, great for them."

"You have to be all the platforms," Ms. Rocha added later. "Because the Tumblr followers? They are a cult. The Twitter followers? They are a cult. You think, 'Well, I have Twitter so I’m hitting everyone.' No, you’re not. You need Vine, Viddy, Sino Weibo, Tencent Weibo, Tumblr, Twitter. And all of them have their own identity."

That kind of platform-agnostic gumption earns you high praise--like being called "not just a hanger but a brand all by herself," from Zac Posen in the New York Times, which delved into how Ms. Rocha has been able use her social media presence to secure deals.

Other notables were on the panel this afternoon, such as Tumblr's fashion evangelist Valentine Uhovski and Kevin Kollenda, founder of Two Hustlers, the agency "instrumental in bringing Lady Gaga to Barney’s last year." (Gaga collaborator Nicola Formichetti is his cofounder.) With his charcoal suit and graffiti baseball hat, Mr. Kollenda certainly looked the part. But it was hard to take our eyes off Ms. Rocha, the only panelist with an iPhone on the table, inches within reach.

She appeared from back stage in an orange sherbert-colored blazer and an orange sherbert blouse with gold buttons that caught the light and set off her goth-y red hair. Beneath her black skinny jeans, the heel of her shoes looked as thin and lethal as a knitting needle. We also detected some classic symptoms of social media withdrawl: the girl was fidgety--pursing her lips, crossing and uncrossing her ankles, twisting her hands together into a tangle of black nail polish.

"I'm talking about the power houses," she said, leaning in toward Ms. Leivie explaining that the old industry stalwarts are reluctant to embrace tech like 3D-printing or laser etching, even though that is the direction fashion is heading.

Asked if she had any advice for social media aspirants, Ms. Rocha suggested making the content you share beautiful. "We’re in an industry where we’re all about beautiful. So Instagram, like I said fuzzy photos don’t work. As much as you’re saying, 'I’m at Michael Kors and I’m front row'--fantastic, good for you. But they don’t care about that fuzzy photo. You have to make sure that it is in fact great content. So for me, I take 10, 15 photos. I filter 5, 6. I pick one. That is a lot of time."

We suppose that means this isn't her Snapchat?

Into all that drama jumped Decoded Fashion with an exceedingly practical idea: a fashion hackathon where industry insiders tell techies what's actually lacking in the market. In other words, rather than the umpteenth street style photo-sharing apps, how about the next Fashion GPS, a digital tracker for samples and look books used by designers like Lanvin, Dior and many, many more.

The hackathon, which took place at AlleyNYC in Midtown last weekend--Betabeat was one of the judges--began with a panel of designers like Rachel Roy and Uri Minkoff, founder and CEO of Rebecca Minkoff, who stressed the need for innovation in areas like managing manufacturers, analytics tools around a product's success rate, and getting the right items in front of the right customer when they're ready to buy.

Decoded Fashion, which was founded in 2011 by Liz Bacelar, acts as a liaison--introducing startups and emerging technology to leaders in fashion and retail through events and discussions. Stephanie Winston Wolfkoff, the ringmaster of Fashion Week, is Decoded Fashion's co-executive producer. The organization is supported by the Council of Fashion Designers of America and the hackathon winners were chosen based on a number of factors, including how well the hacks would further the mission of the CFDA. (Top prize: $10,000 and CFDA will build your app.)

There's been some grumbling about corporate hackathons of late--and the "fine line between engaging and exploiting." But in a Series A crunch, Decoded's set up seemed like a call for rationality, at least to us. There were also plenty of familiar Silicon Alley faces by way of tech bona fides. Mentors included Startup Bus conductor Mike Caprio, Andy Hagerman from The Design Gym, and Status Chart founder Chris Kennedy, whom we named one of the most poachable players in tech in last Spring.

In addition to getting the right balance of fashion vs. tech and startup folks vs. industry big wigs, the crowd of about 300 was also markedly diverse.

"I’ve been to many hackathons before. I’ve never seen a fashion hackathon with that much diversity of thought--this diversity of race, with this diversity of gender," a 7-months pregnant Ms. Bacelar told the crowd. "We’re 40 percent female here today and I’m so so proud. We didn’t recruit for that, it just happened. It shows how technology is changing and I’m so proud of it so thank you."

And, seriously, you've never seen such a well-dressed bunch of bleery-eyed coders. We spotted knee-high shearling boots, two shimmering gold numbers (one worn by Tumblr fashion evangelist Valentine Uhovski--a fellow judge) and plenty of leathah.

Unlike your traditional hackathon, the five finalists chosen had from Sunday until the grand finale, which will happen on the runway at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week with a keynote from Zach Posen and Dennis Crowley. Yes, like QR codes, apps are about to make their big tent debut.

So despite concerns about vaporware, judges were looking for ideas that would present well in a couple weeks--with advice from mentors like Kevin Ryan along the way. (Notable considering some of the chosen few sounded like future Gilt Groupe acquisitions.)

The finalists included Coveted, a universal checkout platform for brands on Tumblr. That one is already in operation, as one of the hackers demonstrated by buying a $250 pair of sunglasses live during the demo. Fashion Dashboard, which analyzes how consumers are interacting with your brand, was another winner for displaying how Prada store windows are popular on Instagram and Foursquare check-ins on H&M. 42 was chosen for its attempt to measure and personalize in-store experiences, as opposed to offline ones. Then there was Avant-Garde, which wants to help with excess inventory by looking at the social media activity of customers on your mailing list. Lastly, SwatchIt is an app designed to help with inefficiencies of sourcing material from, say, rural parts of India so that designers can send questions and get a yes or no response to a database of artisans.

You can check out more information about the projects via Hacker League.

The five finalists will be whittled down to three before the 14th. Now we just have to figure out if there's anything in our closet that won't get us kicked out of the tents.

Tumblr's David Karp and Mashable interviewer Lauren Indvik at Decoded Fashion. (Photo: Decoded Flickr)

Armed with infographics and and boundless enthusiasm, tech prodigy David Karp wowed the audience at the fashion-tech conference Decoded Fashion on Monday with Tumblr’s astonishing growth and success.

Betabeat was sipping coffee in the lobby of Alice Tully Hall when we saw a young-ish man walk in. He looked like a well-dressed college coed, in a dark suit, black tie and gray sneakers. It wasn’t until we got a good look at his face (and shaggy bowlcut) that we realized we were looking at Mr. Karp, the founder and CEO of Tumblr, and one of the closest things the tech world has to a rock star. A very nice, sort of nerdy rock star.

Mr. Karp settled into his seat onstage with an enthusiastic wave, plying the audience with slides detailing Tumblr’s insane growth. For example, Tumblr has 16 billion pageviews a month, soon to reach 17 billion, with 600 posts per second.

Karp’s slides had the classic “Tumblr blue” background as he explained Tumblr’s ecosystem of creators, curators and audience, as well as fashion’s role in the Tumblrverse. Though the website has received scrutiny and crticism recently for its problematic relationship with fashion, Mr. Karp demonstrated Tumblr’s growing ties with the fashion community, including some of the best examples of fashion tumblrs (Vogue, Dolce & Gabbana, the New York Times magazine).

“Anyone inspired by world fashion... can participate with fashion in meaningful ways,” said Mr. Karp. “At its core, it’s a creative community... a creative platform with the creative ability to tell stories.”

Mr. Karp was engaging and answered questions quickly and without hesitation in a clipped accent. He spoke vaguely of “leveraging unique resources to add value to Tumblr,” though it was unclear if he was talking about existing Tumblr features or ones to be rolled out.

Mashable's Lauren Indvik brought up Tumblr’s recent gaffes with the fashion industry, but Mr. Karp was dismissive in the most friendly of ways. “It was heavily publicized,” he said of Tong's departure, and insisted that the difference incidents be “decoupled.” He stated that a maligned effort by Tumblr's former fashion director Rich Tong was just a proposal sent out for feedback, and that someone merely decided to make “a big fuss” about its contents prematurely. He then spoke glowingly of Valentine Uhovski, the new director for Tumblr’s fashion (with a promise of pulling together Fashion Week programming).

Mr. Karp also spoke of the multitude of bloggers who use the site, assuring that Tumblr gives them more “touch points” into the industry.

“I don’t think anyone else... gives opportunities in this platform,” he said confidently.

But what seemed to be the centerpiece of the keynote was Tumblr’s new plan for advertisers (i.e., Tumblr's monetization strategy). Tumblr will be rolling out a new, two-pronged advertising schema. Advertisers will be allowed access to the Tumblr Spotlight, a portion of the site that new users can browse, which Mr. Karp called a “major point of discussion.” Mr. Karp is also letting advertisers into the Tumblr Radar section of the site, which heretofore only featured sites chosen by Tumblr. Mr. Karp did not elaborate as to who the advertisers will be or the nature of the ads.

He credited Tumblr’s previous lack of advertisements to his own reservations. He did not hide his (friendly!) contempt for advertising, emphasizing that Tumblr is a creative community which values expression, which advertising, in his opinion, is not.

So change is coming to Tumblr. Even if it’s just a stray advertisement in a small areas of the site later this week, Mr. Karp’s keynote highlighted how change is inevitable for something so dynamic and immense.

Decoded Fashion's Consumer Powered Design panel with Ari Goldberg, Louis Monoyudis, Nina Cherny and Joyann King (Photo: Decoded Flickr)

It's far from perfect, but the fashion industry is in a committed relationship with technology. The day-long Decoded Fashion event at Lincoln Center on Monday explored the facets of the fusion of tech and fashion. While the two can get along swimmingly, the fashion industry's understanding of tech is limited, and technology is (currently) unable to fix some of fashion's biggest problems.

Comprised of ten panels with three keynotes (including Tumblr's wunderkind David Karp), the event celebrated technology’s role in the fashion industry, though many panels also addressed the myriad problems that fashion faces with its expansion online in the era of social media.

By now, it’s a given that fashion has to have a social media presence, but there are five platforms you “can’t not do” as a brand, most notably Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram, according to tech-savvy fashionistas.

Representatives of different brands differed on which they found to be the most valuable. While many lauded the click-through properties of Twitter, more found that Facebook was the most lucrative for actual sales. In fact, Stylecaster's Ari Goldberg noted that for some brands, Facebook drove three times the traffic of Twitter. Instagram and Tumblr remain virtual lookbooks for brands, and though the designers of the CFDA panel swore the photo app was their favorite, neither has as much success as other social media when it comes to actually pushing product.

All of the designers of the CFDA panel (from Alice+Olivia, kate spade and Nicole Miller) viewed social media as a narrative device, each one a different storefront window to fill up with the right sort of content. While some panels used social media to talk about numbers, designers and creatives viewed it as a tool for spread of their brands over the Internet, or “creating the world of the brand,” as Ms. Bendet termed it.

The general consensus of the day was that Pinterest will be the next big social media outlet. Though that may not be breaking news, the fashion industry is coming for the fledgling site. Already, brands like Saks have pinboards which are connected to their main sites.

While the conference celebrated the use of technology in fashion, there was a theme of "technology as obstacle" that pervaded several panels. The Internet creates a gap between retailer and consumer, one which startups, technology and social media are trying to bridge, with varying degrees of success.

The "Investor Reveal" panel staffed by venture capitalists and the session entitled “Consumer-Powered Design” spoke to fashion’s problematic relationship with the Internet. Panelists throughout the day implied that there is a misunderstanding by the majority of the fashion industry of how the fashion business translates into e-commerce. Members of some panels went so far as to call the fashion industry "broken."

“Fashion is laggard when it comes to data,” said Mr. Goldberg, who asserted that the industry would be transformed once it got its online act together.

Social media was not the only method presented as means for pushing product; there was plenty of tech, including a dazzling video panel. (FYI, interactive video is about to happen in a major way.)

Each panel may have looked at fashion and technology's relationship a different way, but ultimately it is a relationship: both rewarding and frustrating, sometimes successful and occasionally a disaster. Despite the boom of startups and innovative use of social media, it seems that the fashion industry needs to decode technology to succeed.