PayPal’s development arm, Braintree are running their worldwide hackathon again in 2015. The first round this year will play out at the Plaza Ballroom, Melbourne, after first coming to Australia last year in Sydney. Being the first round, Melbourne has a big opportunity to set a high benchmark for the rest of the world and that US$100,000 prize should serve as a good incentive.
Local developers will meet their competition this morning at 10-11am, form teams if they don’t already have one, before smashing the keyboards from 1pm today. Teams will present their creations at 2pm tomorrow, from there judges will decide on the winners and at 4PM the awards ceremony will being.
The great thing about BattleHack is that the claim no ownership over the hacks produced, this means teams are able to take a success idea developed in 24hrs and run with it and many teams in the past have turned their hacks into businesses. The only requirement is that somewhere in your application, you implement the PayPal API. Thanks to the Braintree developer tools and samples, the process is easy.
Judges
Teams will be judged on the quality of the idea, its implementation, quality of execution, technical innovation and the overall user experience. I’m delighted to be asked back to be a judge of the Melbourne round.
Prizes
[ 1ST PRIZE ] – First placed winners will each receive THE AXE, a BattleHack axe that you’ll have as a memento to remember the event forever. You’ll also get a paid trip to the US to compete against the winners from around the globe to compete for US$100K, which of course will be paid into your PayPal account.
[ 2ND PRIZE ] – XBOX ONE 500GB – Get your game on with one of the newest and most immersive gaming consoles available! It also doesn’t hurt that Microsoft recent confirmed developers will be able to publish apps to the platform, so this could be a target platform in the future.
[ 3RD PRIZE ] – ADAFRUIT ARDX V1.3 KIT – Tap into the grid and take your hardware hacks to the next level of awesomeness!
Early birds will also receive a SPARK CORE, be one of the first 25 hackers in the door get yourself a Spark Core! There will also be category prizes for best API/tool implementation from partners.
Expect plenty of coverage over the weekend, especially of the winners tomorrow. If you’re participating, don’t expect to sleep, you can do that on Monday, time out is time your competition is beating you. Last year the atmosphere was fantastic with a real feeling of the participants there, being there with a purpose to change world for the better. Fueled by Red Bull and Pizza, it’s going to be a long night at BattleHack Melbourne!
For more information head to https://2015.battlehack.org/melbourne and if you’re competing, you’d be well served by keeping https://developers.braintreepayments.com close by.
Update
The hack is well under way with the tables full of developers from Melbourne and even a few from Sydney that made the trek for BattleHack. New this year is a series of workshops in a breakout room that enables developers to get a hands-on run down on the code required to work with the PayPal/Braintree SDKs.
