hackfest Archives : Global Nerdy

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Hey, developers from Ottawa and parts nearby!

Are you interested in building innovative, novel apps on the Shopify ecommerce platform?
Have you got “the skillz to pay the billz”?
Are you available on Saturday, November 19th?

If the answer to that last question is “Maybe!”, we’d love to see you at Shopify’s Ottawa Hackfest taking place that day.

We’re celebrating our recent round of new funding. As my coworker David Underwood puts it:

Shopify is throwing an all day hack event the like of which has been seen several times before. That doesn’t make it any less fun though, I promise.

With a stunning endorsement like that, how can you possibly choose to miss this event?

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When and Where

The Date: Saturday, November 19th
The Time: 9:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
The Place: Shopify’s Offices, 61A York Street, in the heart of ByWard Market

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So How Does This Work?

Everyone shows up in the morning ready to start coding at 10 a.m.. We provide you with food, drink, and assistance throughout the day as you build the best Shopify app you can. At 5 p.m., work stops and everyone with a working demo presents what they’ve done. We pick our favourite projects and award fabulous prizes for them. Then everyone retires to a nearby pub and parties into the night.

Who Will Be There?

Shopifolk (Shopify employees) will be on hand to provide assistance throughout the day. And of course, your teammates/competitors will be there too.

Why Are You Doing This?

Because we can! We have to spend that $15 million we raised somehow, you know. We’re also always on the lookout for new talent to join the Shopify team, so don’t be surprised if someone takes a shine to you.

What Will Be Provided?

Breakfast
Lunch
Video games (Street Fighter 4!)
Workspaces with power and wireless internet
Fabulous prizes (to be announced)!

What Should I bring?

Laptop
Power supply
Your enormous intellect
Beverage container (e.g. travel mug)

What Should I Build?

Anything you want! The only restrictions are that it has to use our API and has to work for a demo at the end of the day. If you don’t have an idea or a team to work with, we’ll match you up with people/projects when you arrive. You can also have a look at our app wishlist if you’re stumped and want a head-start.

Ok, I’m Convinced. Where Do I Sign Up?

Go here to register. Spaces are limited, so don’t dawdle. We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

HackVAN and Shopify

HackVAN, Vancouver’s big API hackday, takes place this Saturday! If you have any skill or interest in writing apps that make use of publicly available APIs or have ideas on how to turn APIs into applications, you should come down and participate! Here are the quick details:

When: Saturday, August 20th, 2011, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Where: Mozilla’s Vancouver offices (163 West Hastings Street, Suite 200, Vancouver BC)
How much? A mere $10 for developers to attend.
Will I get fed? We’re providing breakfast and lunch.
How do I register? Visit the HackVAN registration site.

The APIses

The HackVAN organizers have rounded up a number of APIs that you can use at HackVAN. The idea is to write an application that uses at least one of these APIs and have it working by the end of the day. David Underwood (Developer Advocate) and Yours Truly (Joey deVilla, Platform Evangelist) will be there as representatives of Shopify and the Shopify API.

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If you’d like to find out more about the Shopify API, check out our API documentation. It’s a RESTful (or as I like to say, “RESTafarian”) API and quite easy to use. I also wrote a series of articles on getting started with the API:

If you want to see what’s possible with the Shopify API, take a look at our App Store, where developers who’ve built Shopify apps can sell them and where Shopify shopowners can buy and install them, extending the capabilities of their shops.

Ours isn’t the only HackVAN API. Our API buddies include:

Context.io: An email API that makes it possible to capture conversations, collaborations and document exchanges in the flow of email so you can harness them for CRM, project managements and other activities where email is the “paper trail”. Here’s their API.
Freshbooks: If you’re a consultant, indie or small business that provides services and bills people for them, Freshbooks makes sending those bills easy. Here’s their API, and here are some implementation examples.
Idee: Best described in three words — awesome image search. They’re providing two APIs: Piximilar, a search-by-color API, and PixMatch, a search-for-similar-images API.
Twilio: Great for building voice- and text-messaging-based apps. Here are their APIs, and here’s their API project gallery.
YellowAPI: Local search for Canadian businesses and other things. Great for those “where’s the nearest X?” apps. Here’s their API.

The Prizes

Write an app that we deem worthy and you could win of these:

First prize is a MacBook Air. 11″ diagonally, really skinny, 1.6GHz dual-core Intel i5 Processor, 4 GB RAM, and 128GB mass storage. It’s an amazing and incredibly portable development machine. My friend Andrew Burke uses this as his main machine, where he does Rails and iOS development on it.

Second prize: iPad 2. The 16GB WiFi model. My iPad is my “second screen”, notetaking device, ebook reader and favorite portable gaming machine. This one’s being provided by Shopify.

Third prize: Amazon Kindle 3G. Free 3G, built-in wifi and space for 3,500 books.

And there will be more prizes, too! If you want a shot at these prizes, come on down on Saturday and participate in HackVAN — register now!

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.