Last weekend, my friends and I took part in BattleHack, a hackathon that is held in 14 different cities around the globe, hosted by PayPal and Braintree. During the event, participants were tasked with developing a range of applications, aimed to solve a challenge of their choice.
On top of winning a real battle axe that glows (how cool is that!), the winning team of 4 will be flown to the finals at PayPal’s headquarters in Silicon Valley to battle it out with teams from around the world for the $100,000 grand prize.
The event kicked-off with a huge bang at 11am, where developers were introduced to all the cool event partners that they may leverage on during the competition. Also, lots of cool swags were given out!
Partners for BattleHack were eagerly sharing their individual hardware gadgets and services. Some of them include Hoiio – a software company that provides cloud communication and apps to businesses, Rainmaker Labs – who gave developers the opportunity to use their beacons to trigger actions on mobile phones, 12 Geeks – which brought a cool eyewear that allows developers to create apps on their mobile phones and view them in a 3D-like space, and JustGiving – a platform which helps in fundraising.
Well, since a picture speaks a thousand words, I’ll let them do the talking… Keep a look out for all the awesome food provided over the event. They feed us so well, makes us wonder if we’re actually here for a buffet-athon rather than a hack-athon, haha! They even brought in a bartender serving alcohol!
As the clock ticks past midnight into the wee hours, I got to see the perseverance of many developers. Of course, there were also those who KO-ed and lost to the Z-monster. If you look hard enough at the photos, you’d spot some teams who would cherish a game of DotA more than their sleep!
And finally… the moment we were all waiting for. The sharing session to hear about all the different cool ideas that surfaced from the 24 hours! Ideas ranged from apps that does Twitter Analytics, a mobile phone selling/buying platform, web services that handles memory of your loved ones, mobile services that handles queue problems, food ordering systems, and even crazy ideas that aims to help our rag-and-bone man in their work … and many more!
It was truly an amazing experience, and I’ve made lots of friends from different countries and exchanged ideas.
Can’t wait till BattleHack 2016, and hope to see everyone again next year 🙂
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