(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.

Mr. Uhovski (Photo: Twitter/ValentineNY)

Between General Assembly setting up shop in London and poaching New York tech loyalist Courtney Boyd Myers as director of audience development, we might as well rename Shoreditch "Silicon Alley East."

All of your old friends with be across the pond this Friday, as well as a très chic new one: Valentine Uhovski, Tumblr's head of fashion, who replaced controversial fashion director Richard Tong. (Technically, Mr. Uhovski's title is "Fashion Evangelist," because of course.)

On September 14th, Mr. Uhovski will join Ms. Myers, affectionately known to techies as @CBM, as well as Advent Ventures general partner Frédéric Court, SilkFred.com founder Emma Watkinson, The Business of Fashion founder Imran Amed, and Sarah Kunst, director of business development at the street style app Kaleidoscope and Betabeat's "Minority Report" columnist for a panel and fireside chat called "From High Street to Haute Couture, How London is Redefining Online Retail." (Hey, isn't that supposed to be New York's claim to fame?)

If anyone attends, let us know whether Mr. Uhovski gets candid about Tumblr's plans to win back fashion brands. Inquiring minds, etc.