API as the Deliverable at the Hackathon

At most hackathons, the end goal is building a web or mobile application, using various platforms and APIs. Even though I’ve seen this evolve to data visualization, or mashing up SaaS platforms at some events, the app really tends to be the primary deliverable at hackathons.

So this week I’m spending time thinking of unique and interesting ways to present my sponsors for the CityGrid Hackathon this weekend in Santa Monica at CoLoft. One of our sponsors is 3Scale, one of my favorite API service providers, and while we see many of the API service providers including Apigee and Mashery involved in many of the hackathons you really don't see anything built using their platform. (I know they’ll ping me and say they do, but really your building using their clients.)

So for the CityGrid Los Angeles hackathon, I want to encourage developers to come up with ideas for APIs, develop the API and using 3Scale, deploy the building block that are essential that enable other developers to build on top of the API.

Not only do we need more, high value APIs, we need developers to be fluent in not just developing and deploying mobile and web apps, developers need to be fluent in designing, developing, deploying and managing APIs.

So if you have a great API idea and are in the Los Angeles area this weekend, come down to the CoLoft in Santa Monica and form a team and build your API, and deploy it using 3Scale, and you just might have a chance at winning $5,000.00 for your API.