Collaborative programming tool bags 2013 WebGeek DevCup top prize

Marte Soliza and Mark Steve Samson of Team Samson Mars won first place in the recent WebGeek Developer's Cup at the Meralco Multi-Purpose Hall in Ortigas, Pasig City.  

 

The two-day weekend competition saw 60 teams of 1-3 programmers each create 48 apps in a gruelling 36 hours of marathon analysis, coding, and testing.  This year’s theme focused on building apps for “development”.

 

Soliza and Samson's entry named OverDrive was on real-time collaborative programming via the popular Text Editor SublimeText using Google Docs using "headless" browsers and Ghost.py script.  For their efforts, they went home with a cash prize of P50,000 and a sack load of goodies and schwags from the sponsors.  They also credited their day job in Insync for helping them conceive their entry.

 

Second place went to ProudCloud’s Team SBK that included Adrian Peterson Co, Jaemar Joseph Ramos, and Jaune Sarmiento.  They created a web app named Mango.js which integrated feature software testing (Selenium) with a project management tool (Pivotal Tracker). 

 

Third place went to Team Think Sumo's Fasci-Nation app that featured a social media aggregator and mosaic/timeline generator for significant and inspirational Philippine events.  Team was composed of Rupert Cabrera, Paolo Santos and Karlo Banzuela.

 

Special prize: 'KidStarter'

 

A special award was given to the GoldenAge team with their KidStarter app that crowd sources payments for school fees of needy and gifted students.  College freshmen Jaime Gabriel Young, Bryan Perry Giger and Kenley Tan were praised by the judges for using “cutting edge technology”.   “I have to say these 17-18 year old kids have a great future ahead of them.  Hacking with Meteor, collaborating with Nitrous.io. While they didn’t win, the bravery required recognition” remarked Judge Jason Torres.

 

Event sponsors included Smart DevNet, Ideaspace, Meralco, Bright, Accenture and Freelancer.  Technology and media partners included GitHub, Atlassian, mongoDB, Code School, StickerMule, Mozilla Firefox, Assembla, Amazon Web Services, Sulit.com.ph and DevCon Philippines.

 

The yearly hackathon was organized by WebGeek Founder John Arce, Co-Founder Michael Marin, and Mozilla WebFWD Scout Alvin Edwald Chan.  According to Arce, the event is an “annual gathering of developers, technologists, futurists and creatives working together to build great apps and pulling together the right talent to build them.” — TJD, GMA News