On October 12th and 13th I attended the Paypal Battlehack in Washinton D.C. which was part of a 10 city world tour of hackathons. It was a well run hackathon which made for a great experience and I met some really great competitors during the event. I was originally attracted to the event because of the awesome battle axe trophies, their really cool promo video, and I love to meet and compete.
Arrived at 8:30am after waking up at 2am to drive from New Jersey. Not the best way to start a hackathon, thought I'd be able to go back to sleep a couple hours once I got to DC, but nope! I wanted to arrive early to win a Raspberry Pi for being one of the first 50 in the door.
The venue for the event was a new co-working space just north of the White House called 1776dc and it really is beautifully designed for work. Paypal sprang for great meals, massages, and had plenty of beverages from coffee to soda to water to vitamin water to red bull to tea to beer. There was no shortage of food or drink at any time during the event, makes all happy.
Lots of hackers doing their thing at the Battlehack.
We had some presentations from the hackathon partners early in the AM. Nick Landry (@activenick) from Nokia presented information about Windows Phone and the available Nokia API's and offered prizes of phones for the best app and Nokia Premium Developer Program tokens for any app that implemented a Windows Phone solution. Kevin Whinnery (@kevinwhinnery) from Twilio was being a rockstar doing live code demos with much success, and brough retro gaming systems to give away. Scott Motte (@scottmotte) showed us why Sendgrid is THE API to use for email, really impressive solution and had Leap Motion devices up for grabs. And Microsoft was in the house with Ashish Jaiman (@ashishjaiman), Andrew Duthie (@devhammer), and Frank LaVigne (@tableteer) offering assistance and letting everyone know about Bizspark, and some XBOX Live points were added to the prize pool.
Team SEEK brought the Windows Phone goodness with an Arduino hack, they built a vending machine with an erector set and servos and then had a proximity device with wireless charging parents could use to track their children while at amusement parks or other public spaces. When the child leaves the zone various text messages and phone calls would alert the parent. They won the partner prize from Nokia and each team member is getting Nokia Lumia 925 phones. They also won a prize for being the most hardcore, these guys worked just about non-stop and had driven to the event from Ohio. They had a bit of a snafu during their demo causing lost time and I think had things gone right they might have taken the overall prize. Of the ideas at the event I think this one had the best opportunity for commercialization. I would totally rent this device, I recently had an experience where I almost lost my son at the park - had I been 10 seconds later in finding him he would have gone around a blind corner that led to several different paths and then I would have had no idea where on the planet my son was which was a terrible feeling.
I thought that 2 minutes to present the apps could have been longer, but I applaud the hosts for applying the time limit evenly and fairly to everyone. I've been at events before where I stuck to the time limit for my presentation and others went on and on beyond the limit. You have to choose your words very carefully and present the features of your app in a way that can be done quickly. Avoid form inputs or anything that takes any time really...
I created an app called BosWash NYCer which is crowdfunding clean streets. People see trash everyday on their way to work, but may not have the time or opportunity to clean it up. Now they can take a picture with their phone, add some description information, and post a bounty for the cleaning. Enterprising individuals can then claim the bounties by cleaning the area and taking their own photos as evidence earning money for themselves or their favorite charity. They can pin the bounties to the start screen on their Windows Phone so they can get directions and other information about a particular bounty with a tap, I used Battlehack partner Nokia HERE maps for the direction. When work begins on a bounty the bounty owner receives a text message and when work is completed they receive a phone call through which they can press 1 to approve the bounty claim, or press 2 to review it later. The text messages and phone calls were powered by Battlehack partner Twilio's API - this is really awesome and I'm going to start today building apps using Twilio I think I might have some money maker ideas. Anyway, When the bounty is approved, payment is made using the Battlehack host PayPal's API and email confirmations are sent using Battlehack partner Sendgrid's API. I built demo apps on Windows Phone and Windows 8, the data in my app is stored using Windows Azure Mobile Services.
Paypal was really awesome and had us set up 10 minutes on which we could practice our presentation and test the demo equipment with our devices. This was a wakeup call for me and when I actually tried to execute my demo I kept losing my place. My solution used both a tablet app and a phone app, so juggling those and speaking at the same time under a 2 minute limit was proving difficult. I went back and refocused my presentation. No matter how much preparation, snafu's happen in demos - despite the assurances of the soundboard guy that the audio would not be a problem, the audio didn't work during my presentation. I was able to quickly make the save by unplugging my phone and putting it on speaker phone for the Twilio phone call part of my demo. I had brought my own Nokia Playup 360 speaker too just for this purpose but the audio worked during the practice, just not during the live demo.
By the end of the hackathon a number of folks had given up and left but there was still plenty of competition for the prizes and in the end 17 teams presented the apps they had built over the course of the past 24 hours. I must admit I had the feeling to just go home by 6am on Sunday, but there was no way I was going to give up and leave without completing what I had come to accomplish.
- Take the roads less traveled with 2Roads, a service that tells you the status of your commute and gives you alternatives. #battlehack DC
- Tapd is an app allows Paypal users to quickly pay for items by tapping their phone against their point-of-sale system. #battlehack DC
- HereUS is a public opinion discovery platform. Users are able to see petitions of the local community and support them. #battlehack
- ScanPal is a Glass app that lets the user instantly find listings of items they see. #battlehack DC
- CrowdPowered helps volunteers organize community projects by enabling organizations and people to donate time and supplies. #battlehack DC
- HoboApp is a service that shows the homeless various locations of services based on need. #battlehack DC
- philanthroFeed enables donations to homeless by sending money to a registered person, which they access at partner stores. #battlehack DC
- Seek is a rentable device children wear that broadcasts signals to parents' phone when their children leave boundaries. #battlehack DC
- Authentic Medicine validates the authenticity of medicine to protect users medically and financially. #battlehack DC
- FeudFunding pits issues against each other by enabling users to contribute $1 to favorites. Winning issues wins total amt . #battlehack #DC
- Next up is FlashShow, which enables you to share media with your friends, which they can view simultaneously when you do. #battlehack DC
- FundB is an alternative of payday loans by enabling groups of friends to fund small loans for each other. #battlehack DC
- Next up is RSVP+, which brings dontations to event signups. #battlehack DC
- GetSkooled is an app made to bring fantasy team gaming to education to lower dropout rates. #battlehack DC
BosWash uses crowdfunding to address local problems of litter, vandalism, unemployment and volunteer opportunities. #battlehack DC- First up @ #battlehack is eLert: a crowd sourced community security environment, using recycled phones to provide home security systems.
PayPal | Developer
In the end I was awarded 2nd place overall, I won a partner prize from Microsoft, and received an honorable mention from partner Nokia. I believe I was the most mentioned app during the awards ceremony which was pretty cool. The winners were Team Philanthrofeed, a group of 4 computer science students from Georgetown University who did a really amazing job. I had been sitting nearby them for most of the hackathon and they worked together so well, I am very proud to come in second to a team like them and they have a really bright future ahead of them. I'm rooting for them to win the whole thing in the San Jose Battlehack World Finals. I'm kind of happy I don't have to travel to California for the finals, but I really wanted that Axe trophy, totally epic.
