The Disrupt SF Hackathon is so damned close that we can almost smell that rare amalgamation of sweat, excitement, exhaustion, and pizza grease in the air.
We’re just over a week away from the big event, where hundreds upon hundreds of coders and designers will be locked in a battle to build the coolest thing they can build in a single 24 hour stretch. The prize? Fame. Glory. Oh, and a nice stack of cash.
Even if you don’t win, you’ll probably walk away with the most important prize of all: knowledge*.
[* Yep, pretty sure that’s the cheesiest thing I’ve ever written.]
We’ve got some pretty great API workshops lined up for the first day of the Hackathon, where you’ll learn the ins-and-outs of a few APIs right from the folks who help make them.
(We’ve also got one of the very last batches of Hackathon tickets available at the bottom of this post — so if you’re still not in, go quick!)
Here’s what to expect:
Amazon Web Services (AWS):
If your mobile application continues to run in the cloud, even when the application is closed, how do you go about providing your customers with useful information about background events? For example, if your application is a game with a leaderboard, how do you notify your users that their leaderboard position has been overtaken by another player? Or, if you’ve created a traffic application, how can you warn users that there is slow traffic ahead? With Amazon Simple Notification Server (SNS), you can transmit push notifications from backend server applications to mobile apps on Apple, Google and Kindle Fire devices using a simple, unified API. In this session, we’ll discuss the benefits of using Amazon SNS for mobile push messaging, and we’ll demonstrate how easy it is to use.
Chevrolet:
Founded in 1911 in Detroit, Chevrolet is now one of the world’s largest car brands, doing business in more than 140 countries and selling more than 4.5 million cars and trucks a year. Chevrolet invites developers to explore what’s possible with in-vehicle and Remote API apps to help drivers bring their digital lives into their vehicles. Add the capability to control millions of vehicles to your app, including location, navigation, remote start, unlock, telemetry & more.
Find out more about Chevrolet’s APIs at http://developer.chevrolet.com
Clover:
Clover is transforming the face of brick-and-mortar commerce by developing Android-based hardware, cloud services, and an open platform for third-party developers, complete with a marketplace enabling merchants to purchase and distribute your apps to all their devices with a single tap. And we’ve partnered with the world’s largest credit card processors to provide you massive leverage.
Michael will give you an architectural introduction to Clover, present our Android and REST APIs, and show some examples of integrating popular apps and services with Clover. He’ll show real-world examples of integrating your existing consumer- and merchant-facing applications with Clover, and how to publish your Android app in our marketplace.
For API documentation see: https://www.clover.com/developers
Dropbox:
Dropbox isn’t just for files anymore! With the recently launched Datastore API, structured data like contacts, app settings, and game state can be synced instantly and effortlessly. Datastores work across platforms (iOS, Android, and JavaScript), support offline access, and resolve conflicts automatically. Of course, Dropbox also has rich APIs for accessing and manipulating files from both web and client apps. Join us in this workshop to learn about the full range of the Dropbox APIs.
Find out more about the Dropbox APIs at https://www.dropbox.com/developers.
Evernote:
The Evernote API lets you tap into the functionality offered by the Evernote service and gain access to the millions of users around the world who use it every day. Using the same API that powers all of Evernote’s native apps, you get full access to a user’s Evernote account, allowing you to create new notes and access existing ones.
In this workshop we’ll introduce the API and look at Evernote’s SDKs, then discuss creating new notes, rendering notes, searching for existing notes and other common operations. You’ll learn how your application can store its data in Evernote, how to tap into the information that a user has already stored in Evernote, and why Evernote is great for more than just note taking.
Find out more about Evernote’s API at: http://dev.evernote.com.
If you’ve yet to attend to one of our hackathons (we tend to throw one on the weekend before each of our biggest conferences), it’s hard to adequately explain what you’re missing. We’ve seen projects of all shapes and sizes, from smart door locks to angry, knife-wielding robots. We’ve had impromptu, 50-person NERF battles break out at 2 a.m. We’ve had projects spin out of the hackathon and go on to be sold for millions.
Plus, everyone who gets on stage and presents a finished project gets into the main Disrupt conference (and all the parties) for free! That’s a $2000+ ticket, on top of the chance to win some massive prizes. If you’ve got something you’ve been dying to build, you’d be crazy not to build it here.
Here’s what you need to know:
- As long as you’re building something, participating in the Hackathon is free. Interested sponsors, give us a shout.
- After 24 hours of building, hackers present their projects to their peers and a panel of all-star judges (we’ll announce those judges in an upcoming post).
- Every hacker who finishes their project and presents on stage gets a free pass to the entire conference, normally valued at around $2,000. Why? Because you’re awesome and we love you.
- The team behind the best hack of the day takes home a cool $5,000, and the top three teams all get to present their projects to the Disrupt audience. There will also be a bunch of prizes awarded by the Hackathon sponsors — more news on those in a few days.
The Disrupt SF 2013 Hackathon runs through the night on September 7 and 8, and we’ve just released the a big ol’ batch of tickets. What are you waiting for?
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