Hackdays hackathons are awesome gatherings of hackers/developers who work either in a team or alone to build applications with publicably available APIs. HackDays started with HackTO(#1) in Toronto and had such a great time that we rolled out HackDays across Canada thanks to an incredible sponsorship from the YellowPages. Our first destination outside of Toronto was Montreal. hackMTL was a blast and the winners are enjoying their awesome prizes! We also wrapped HackOTT in Ottawa and HackWaterloo in Waterloo and are now looking forward to helping anyone across Canada interested in organzing a hackathon.

For HackMTL and HackOTT, we rounded up various public APIs from local tech startups and have made them available to local developers. We will be doing the same again for HackTO version 2!

Each HackDays API will be supported by someone totally familiar with the API (so you won’t be wasting time trying to find answers to your questions) and we will provide a great hacking  environment with caffeeine, pizza, snacks and prizes (and glory)! Working in teams or solo–and with expert guidance from our API sponsors–developers compete to create the coolest application using one or more of the available APIs. And just to make things interesting, this is all done in a few hours!

If you’re with either a technology company, a start up or a non profit organization that you think ought to be involved, or if you have any questions, drop us an email would love to hear from you.

BTW this is an all day event; breakfast, lunch and snacks provided! Our schedule will look something like this:

• 9:00 – Breakfast and introductions: Meet your HackDays organizers and all the developers, get acquainted with the space + final schedule + grab a breakfast of champions!
• 9:30 – API presentation: learn about the APIs available. Each API provider will have 5 minutes to introduce their API, discuss its salient features and get you excited about using it.
• 10:15 – Open Planning: come up with hacking idea and build a team. This is a white board exercise: if you have an idea that you would like to work on, just put its name down on the white board; if you are looking to build a team, identify yourself to other developers with the skill sets that you need. If you are looking for ideas, identify yourself to other developers as well.
• 10:30 – Hacking setup and start. You claim a little spot of the office with your team or by yourself and start working on your project. All the API providers will be on hand the entire day to provide support.
• Noon – Lunch
• 1:00 – Continue hacking – help yourself to all the energy snacks you need!
• 5:30 – Application presentation – 3 minutes for each presenter!
• 6:30 – Judging and prizes
• 7:00 – Off to nearby pub for celebrations!

HackTO is made possible by the incredible support from YellowPages.

Awesome API sponsors include: Context.io,  FreshBooks, TinEye, YellowPages.