Berlin! Here Are The Judges, Prizes, Workshops, And Final Tickets For The First Ever Disrupt Europe Hackathon

Think you’re one of the best developers in all of Berlin? Here’s your chance to prove it — and maybe, just maybe, take home a nice stack of cash for your efforts.

This weekend, we’re bringing our TechCrunch Disrupt conference to Europe for the first time — and to kick it all off, we’re throwing one of our crazy, wonderfully-exhausting hackathons.

This’ll be the last batch of tickets we release before the event. Oh, as if the deal weren’t sweet enough: we’ve added a bunch of new prizes to the mix. Oh, and API workshops! Oh, oh, and a fantastic panel of judges!

Never been to one of our Hackathons? Here’s the gist of it: You enter. You find a team, or bring one with you (or, hell, hack alone!). We start the clock, you open your blank code editor, and you let loose every bit of skill you’ve got at your disposal to build something entirely from the ground up.

At the end of (just less than) 24 hours, you and your team have 60 seconds to wow the crowd —from your fellow hackers, to local VCs, to our panel of awesome judges.

Judges:

Speaking of awesome judges: meet your judges!

Peter Borchers

Peter is the founder and head of Deutsche Telekom’s global incubator, hub:raum. hub:raum provides seed/early stage startup companies with funding, support and a pragmatic way to leverage the assets of a global corporation. Prior to that, he co-founded and managed an internal innovation accelerator for Deutsche Telekom (T-Innovations GmbH) as well as his own internet startup (Everseven).

Anika Klauss

For the past two years, Anika has been a Developer Platform Evangelist for Microsoft. Before this, she studied Media and Communication and Political Science at Free University of Berlin, and Corporate and Business Communications at the Berlin University of the Arts.

Alexander Grosse

Alexander Grosse is VP of Engineering at SoundCloud. Before SoundCloud he worked as R&D Director at Nokia. Alexander has worked in a wide range of positions (Development, Consulting, CTO) in the software industry since 1996, including co-founding two startups. He holds a Masters in computer science from the University Of Oldenburg and an Executive MBA from FOM Berlin. Besides computer science, Alexander works(/worked) as a techno DJ in Berlin’s party scene.

Johannes Reck

Johannes is CEO and co-founder of GetYourGuide. He graduated with distinction from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology with a Master’s Degree in Biochemistry

 

Also meet our lovely code auditor (the code for the Top 3 finalists is audited to help ensure the projects are, in fact, built at the Hackathon):

Falko Richter

Falko is all about mobile, and has been developing applications for Android and iOS devices since 2009. He dreams that one day, we will need only our phone for all daily business. After years at SinnerSchrader Mobile and building up a mobile department at Berlin’s Quandoo, he is now a freelance developer and consultant.

API Workshops

Need some inspiration? Want to learn a thing or two before you leave? At each hackathon, we offer a series of awesome API workshops lead by some of the very people who help make those APIs a reality. Workshops occur on day one (Saturday, Oct 26th) at the following times:

• 2:00p.m – Paymill: Paymill demonstrates how to integrate their online payment API
• 2:30p.m – Lufthansa/Foursquare: Lufthansa and Foursquare have teamed up to encourage teams to build travel-themed hacks, and will be demonstrating how to use Foursquare’s APIs to do that.
• 3:00p.m – Box: Box’s Director of Product, Peter Rexer, will lead a workshop on how to use Box’s API for easy content management.

Prizes!

Last but not least, the prizes!

Now, we’ve always had some pretty sweet prizes on the line. The top team of the day (as determined by our judges) takes home an easy $5,000, and the Top 3 teams all get to demonstrate their hacks a second time … in front of the entire audience at the main Disrupt Europe conference. Meanwhile, the top fifty teams will each take home 2 tickets to the entire Disrupt Europe conference, each valued at nearly $1,000.

But wait! That’s not all!

Note: Updated on Oct. 25th with even more prizes.

Our API sponsors have thrown another couple thousands of dollars worth of prizes into the mix. Here’s what else is up for grabs:

• Weather Underground is giving away $1,000 for “the most creative and innovative” use of their weather API
• Mashery The best hack using an API from Mashery’s 50+ public APIs will receive an iPong Ping Pong Robot, 4 paddles, and a starter ping-pong ball kit
• Yammer will give three factory-unlocked Lumia 925s and a Jambox to the team who makes best use of the Yammer API
• Zalando is looking for the team with the “most innovative and creative approach of using [their] API to take customers on a unique shopping journey”. That team (up to 5 people) will each get a Nexus 7 tablet and a 200 Euro Zalando voucher.
• Lufthansa & foursquare will fly you directly to the foursquare Headquarters in New York City. The best Travel related hack will be awarded with a trip to New York and an exclusive developer meet & greet with a behind the scenes look at foursquare headquarters (for up to 3 people incl. economy tickets and 2 nights of accommodation).

Sound like fun? It ought to! Because it’s going to be great.

As mentioned, we’re pretty much out of tickets. We scrounged together one last batch of tickets, which we’ve released down below. If you don’t get in this time, you’re probably out of luck.

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tl;dr:

To recap, here’s what you need to know.:

• As long as you’re building something, participating is free. Interested sponsors, give us a shout.
• After roughly 24 hours of building, hackers present their projects to their peers and a panel of fantastic judges (see above).
• The Top 50 teams each get 2 tickets to Disrupt Europe
• 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 (see above.)

The Disrupt Europe 2013 Hackathon runs overnight, from Oct 26th-26th, and we’ve just released the very last batch of tickets. What are you waiting for?

(Want to just attend the Hackathon presentations on Sunday? We’re releasing tickets for that, as well. Make sure you get the right one.)

Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our sponsorship team here sponsors@beta.techcrunch.com.

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Tickets: