AT&T Developer Summit Hosts Biggest Hackathon Yet with Over $250,000 Up for Grabs

The developer world is set to experience one of the biggest hackathons of the year on January 2–3, 2016. Developers will flock to Las Vegas during that time for a chance to win over US$250,000 in cash and prizes at the AT&T Developer Summit hackathon.

It’s the biggest hackathon prize pool of the year, bar none. And participating is free! I like the word “plethora” to describe the individual competitions, and there’s still plenty of time for you to participate. Here is a complete rundown of the competition.

Developers in this competition will create solutions leveraging AT&T APIs. The top three finalists (1st prize $25k, 2nd prize $10k, 3rd prize $5K) will be chosen to participate in the Best Overall App judging happening on-stage at this year’s Summit keynote.

For this challenge, you will be asked to improve the efficiency of city services by leveraging AT&T and sponsor technologies to address issues in parking, resource management, and community engagement.

For this challenge, you will be asked to leverage IoT hardware and software from AT&T and sponsors in order to tackle issues around sustainability. Projects should focus on resource conservation and/or recycling and be consumer-based solutions.

For this challenge, you will be asked to create an impactful education-focused app. Apps will leverage AT&T and sponsor technology with a focus on disrupting traditional learning in the school, at home, or both.

For this challenge, you will be asked to build an app focused on music, video, or gaming (or all three) that leverages AT&T or DirectTV APIs in a meaningful way. This challenge is platform-agnostic so feel free to use the tools, frameworks, and libraries of your choice.

For this challenge, you will be asked to combine AT&T home automation and other partner technologies (this includes, but is not limited to, AT&T Digital Life) to provide a solution that enhances the connected home customer experience in a meaningful way.

Details to be announced in mid-December.

Details to be announced in mid-December.

Details to be announced in mid-December.

Details to be announced in mid-December.

Details to be announced in mid-December.

AT&T has adopted a progressive approach to innovation - one that embraces openness and encourages collaboration between entrepreneurs and professionals of all genders and backgrounds. This challenge will be awarded to the best mobile app created by a women-led team.

The AT&T M2X award will be given to the best data-driven device or application that showcases your innovation and leverages M2X for cloud data storage. Use the M2X Data Service API to store and/or retrieve your time-series data, perform analytics, and visualize your data. Bring your creation to life using devices and sensors brought by your team or provided by sponsors, along with the open source client libraries.

The winner will be the project that best uses Flow Designer as an integral part of their solution. Create custom business logic that provides the “glue” for your complex IoT solution. The drag-and-drop development environment allows rapid prototyping, and the cloud-based deployment platform will let you run your compiled projects at scale. AT&T Flow Designer will be released as a beta service at the start of the hackathon.

Enter for a chance to win $5,000 by adding Sponsored Data to your hackathon app. Sponsored Data is a product from AT&T that enables developers to designate content they are willing to sponsor the data charge for on behalf of AT&T mobility customers. Enrich your experience in less than an hour so customers can enjoy mobile content without impacting their data plan.

The winning app will use as many AT&T Digital Life APIs as possible to bring innovative and compelling use cases for the connected home. The app should mash Digital Life APIs with other adjacent use cases or APIs to showcase how combining features and functionalities can simplify lives. The app must be in working order, demonstrated on the assigned hardware, and credentials must not be hard coded so that the app can be switched from one environment to another.

Show the “art of the possible” that AT&T Enhanced WebRTC can offer in terms of new, richly enabled communications experiences using a simple cut-and-paste code snippet framework. Just enable voice or video calling in your browser app using the AT&T mobile number, a virtual number or an account ID (using the AT&T Enhanced WebRTC API, of course), and you’re all set.

The AT&T connected car challenge will award the best in-vehicle application built with the AT&T Drive SDK and APIs. Developers must use HTML5 and JavaScript APIs as well as a head unit simulator to develop their in-vehicle applications. Through these APIs, developers can use AT&T Drive capabilities such as map integration, navigation, vehicle information, and information search (weather, parking, POIs) to build their applications and in addition can bring in other content through external web services or other mechanisms.

For this challenge, you will be asked to build an app that helps address distracted driving while in the vehicle. The solution should leverage AT&T or sponsor technology (or both) in order to encourage proper driving habits or assist in preventing distracting driving habits.

Details to be announced in mid-December.

Details to be announced in mid-December.

Details to be announced in mid-December.

Details to be announced in mid-December.

Details to be announced in mid-December.

Details to be announced in mid-December.

Details to be announced in mid-December.

Details to be announced in mid-December.

Details to be announced in mid-December.

Details to be announced in mid-December.

For more information about the upcoming hackathon, tips on presenting, and other details, visit the 2016 AT&T Developer Summit website or visit this blog post about the event.