Two-day Baltimore Hackathon kicks off tonight

Do-it-yourself digital cameras, solar cookers. The Baltimore Hackathon isn’t your usual batch of coders hunched over laptops and cans of Red Bull.
“It’s open to the public, so really anyone’s welcome to come,” said Jason Denney, organizer of the third Baltimore Hackathon. It kicks off Friday at 6 p.m. and runs through Sunday at 6 p.m. at AOL/Advertising.com in Tide Point.
The camera and solar cooker won honors at the second hackathon in 2012, also held at Ad.com. Other winners then included an app to help design color palettes and an HTML5 gaming platform.

Though Denney had wanted to bring the hackathon back last year — scheduling issues cropped up with other similar events — this year, the hackathon returns with bigger prizes, in part as a result of a lower turnout than planned (100 people are expected to show, Denney said).
Teams that win in the hardware and software categories will take home $600, plus $200 per member. Software winners may also pick a prize from Betamore. In addition, the competition offers a $400 audience favorite nod and sponsored prizes. For example, Traitify is offering a DJI Phantom Aerial UAV to a project that makes novel use of the company’s personality API.
Though sponsors may have employees also competing in the hackathon, Denney said they are not eligible for their employers’ prizes.
And unlike, say, National Novel Writing Month, if participants come with the work partially done already, that’s fine by Denney, though he said judges will give more weight to projects started and finished in the 48-hour hackathon.
“The main point is to come, work on something you’re passionate about and interested in, then present it at the end of the weekend,” Denney said. “It’s OK if people bring projects they’ve been working on ahead of time. They just have to disclose.”