AT&T and American Airlines Travel Hackathon at SXSW

This year’s AT&T Hackathon at SXSW is focused on technology and travel.  With travel on the hackers’ brains and technology at their fingertips, these geeks are going to get knee deep in some code!  For the hack, AT&T has partnered with American Airlines to create a venue for these techies to fly technology into the future!  AT&T has numerous hackathons during the year, and the SXSW event is expected to be one of the largest of 2013.  Being such a prime event, AT&T and American Airlines have decided to award the winning team with 10k in cash, plus other prizes! There are also some fantastic prizes for 2^nd and 3^rd place (more info below).  AT&T Hackathons don’t mess around when it comes to taking care of the winners!  During the AT&T Developers Conference in Las Vegas one team won a brand new Chevy Volt!  These winners are now riding in style….

So if you love technology, and are fascinated with travel, come to this hackathon and be the first to program with unreleased APIs from AT&T and American Airlines – AT&T hybrid-location information services (beta) and American Airlines travel and AAdvantage APIs.  Also make sure you say thank you to Alex Donn of AT&T for setting up all these hackathons.  This guy really goes the extra mile for all you developers out there.

Event Schedule.  The following is a list of the weekend’s agenda:

Saturday:

• 10AM – Kickoff event with breakfast, networking, and developer dating which leads into idea pitches and team formation.
• 11AM – Travel related API Presentations – API specific presentations from hackathon sponsors. Speakers listed below.
• 01PM – Team Registrations Due: http://www.mobileapphackathon.com/register/
• 02PM – Idea review session 1 – refine your pitch with business consultants and review your technology stack
• 04PM – Idea review session 2 – This is not a repeat of the last line. We want to make sure that you refine your pitch a second time with business consultants and review your technology stack to ensure that you have the highest possibility of winning.

Sunday:

• 10AM –  The fun continues with an all day hackathon. Work with the teams that you formed the day before. “Senseis” will be available throughout the entire event to help you code up your solution.
• 3PM – Promptly at 3PM, teams will begin pitching their ventures. Pitches are limited to three (3) minutes per team.

Prizes. The following prizes are experiential and geared towards accelerating you towards a successful business as well as expanding your network and industry knowledge:

• AT&T and American Airlines Travel App Challenge (must build a travel related app that uses AT&T Location Information Services APIs and American Airlines APIs (TBA – top secret for now)) 
  • 1st Place – $10,000 split amongst team members, 25k American Airlines AAdvantage Miles per team member (max 5 team members)
  • 2nd Place – $3,000 split amongst team members, 25k American Airlines AAdvantage Miles per team member (max 5 team members)
  • 3rd Place – $1,000 split amongst team members

Judging Criteria. Apps will be judged based on the criteria below and weighted accordingly.

• 33% Weight – Ability to clearly articulate what your app does

• 33% Weight – Originality and UI implementation of idea

• 33% Weight – Demonstrable mobile app (live website is bonus)

Nathan Chandra

Nathan Chandra, Co-Founder and Chief Hustler of WeLink, is an entrepreneur at heart and thrives off ideas. He is a shameless promoter and has successfully helped start companies in the music, legal and technology industries. Being a smooth operator gives Nathan a slick demeanor, but don't be fooled; his business brain is always in gear. In a past lifetime, Nathan wrote and performed on Jon B's platinum selling "Cool Relax" album alongside 2Pac and Babyface. While rocking shows throughout the world, Nathan was dubbed Mr. Cool Pants during a sold out concert in London. Mary J brought him on stage and the jumbotron showed Nathan doing what is now known as "the cool pants dance". The crowd went into a hysteria! Nathan's man cave is filled with pictures from this night and unmentionables that were thrown on stage. If you ever meet Nathan, don't ask him to do the dance. We made the mistake of doing this and we've been love sick ever since.

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn