Welcome to Episode 1 of the first (and hopefully many) fun challenge hackathons that we will be putting on monthly!

The way it will work:

- Hackathons will last for a full week and overlap a weekend so that those with jobs will have time to participate if they wish.

- All participants will be given the same two APIs and a theme.  Developers will then create an application using any APIs they wish, but the two APIs mentioned in the contest MUST be used in order to have a valid submission.

- All participants will create a video demonstrating their application.

- A panel of judges will review all submissions and pick the winners based off of the judging criteria found to the right.

A large reason for these fun hackathon challenges is for newcomers to the topcoder platform to learn what it would be like to participate in a customer challenge, so please utilize the forums if you find that you are lost or if you have any questions about the challenge at all.  The link to the forums will appear on the top right of this page once you register for this challenge.

 

On to the show!

Since this is our first hackathon, we will start pretty basic so that we all get the feel of the formatting of these challenges:

APIs you must use:  Google and Facebook

Theme:  Anything you want

This month will be a free-for-all!  No limits and no boundaries!  What kind of app can you build in a week that will be so interesting, innovative, and cool that will award you the title of Hackathoner of the Month?

Don’t know where to start?  Feel free to check out this hackathon starter kit, which is a boilerplate for node.js web apps.  That web page will provide you with step by step instructions on how to set yourself up with each of these APIs.  It is not required to use this starter kit, but it is here if you need it.  

When you have completed coding your application, all that is left to do is to create a video showing off your app.  Typically what contestants do for the TCO hackathons is record their screen while speaking over the video describing what is being done.  For examples, check out what members did for the TCO15 Hackathon in San Francisco!

The cool thing about all this is that at the end of the challenge we will be posting everyone’s submissions in the forums where all registrants of the challenge can go to view, comment, and ask questions about other member’s entries.  Although this is different than a customer challenge (where you cannot view the winner’s submissions), we believe that the knowledge-sharing among developers will help you all become stronger in your craft, and we want to help facilitate that for you!

Oh, did I not mention what the top 3 winners would receive?  Although this is a fun challenge and meant for learning, we feel like we need to give out something pretty neat for these great apps.  So, without any further ado, we are announcing fun new prizes for the Hackathon Fun Challenges where 2nd and 3rd place will receive a limited edition grey “2015 Hackathon Winner” t-shirt and the 1st place winner will receive a gold color “2015 Hackathon Winner” t-shirt.  Remember, these challenges take place monthly, so there will only be 12 gold shirts given out in a year!  So remember to compete hard and compete often to get your hands on this super rare topcoder t-shirt and show it off proudly!

As far as submitting, please see below.

Final Submission Guidelines

Submission for this competition is very simple and must be completed exactly in order to have a valid submission.  

- Your textfile should be named <your topcoder handle>_hackathon1.txt, so for example my textfile would be named nick.castillo_hackathon1.txt. 

- In this textfile should be two links.  

----- One link will be to your github code

----- The other link will be to a youtube or vimeo video in which you are showing off your application.  

If you need help figuring out which url you should be using, click here to view the document explaining what we are expecting to see.