As part of Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference, Salesforce is hosting its second major hackathon on October 10-12 in San Francisco. The format for this year’s hackathon has been expanded to include specific categories for not just Heroku, but also some of our favorite open source projects. With over ten prizes of more than $10,000 each, this is a great opportunity to build something cool, take advantage of some of the latest Heroku features, and help your favorite open source projects.
Heroku Category
Heroku has long focused on helping you build apps. In looking at the data we have on the over 5 billion requests Heroku serves each day, the percentage coming from mobile devices has grown over time to be a substantial amount. Focusing on building your app functionality vs. scaling and keeping the lights on is the reason we see so many mobile and other apps on Heroku.
That's why this year there is a category at the Salesforce Hackathon just for mobile apps which utilize Heroku. Build a mobile app or browser app that works on mobile which is backed by Heroku during the hackathon and you're eligible. Of course we're excited to see how creative you can be with it, so introducing connected devices is always a plus. To make it even easier for building mobile apps we’ve released some open source tooling to help you along. You can read more on this and grab the code from our engineering blog.
Open Source Category
Beyond seeing awesome apps built, one area especially dear to our heart is the open source categories. In addition to competing in the main Heroku, Force.com, and Heroku + Force.com category there are some prizes reserved just for open source contributions. We heavily leverage open source at Heroku, contribute back to projects, and release our own, and we want to encourage others to do the same. If you create a library or make a contribution to some open source project as part of the hackathon, you're eligible to win a $5,000 prize just for contributing – you don't have to be a winner in another category. Our open source categories this year are:
- Ruby
- Node
- Python
- Postgres
We're looking forward to see what comes out of this. We’re also pretty excited to be giving away a total of $20,000 to organizations to help further open source. Each of the four open source winners will get to choose an open source non-profit to which we’ll make an extra $5,000 donation, above and beyond the prize to the winners. In other words, if you win, your favorite OS organization will win too.
What is the Salesforce Hackathon?
Just in case you’re unfamiliar with the Hackathon… The Salesforce $1 Million Hackathon happens October 10th through the 12th at City View in San Francisco. It’s free and open to all developers if you are anywhere near the Bay Area or can get here, come on by. There are plenty of opportunites to win, with over 35 prizes in total across three main categories of Force.com, Heroku, and Force.com with Heroku and some special awards just for open source. It’s a full-weekend hackathon – come and go as you need, or stay overnight (food is provided) – and the Salesforce team has some cool stuff in store for attendees. I’ll be spending much of my time there checking out what people are building, answering questions, and helping troubleshoot Heroku issues along with several other Herokai.
Whether you’re looking to build an app that scratches an itch you’ve had for a while, kick start your startup, or just connect with others and build awesome apps, the hackathon is your place to do it. We look forward to seeing all the awesome apps that come out of it and connecting with everyone there. Get registered for it today before it’s full. If you’re new to Heroku make sure to create your account as well and be sure to say hi to the Herokai supporting the event - we’ll all be wearing purple t-shirts.