They came, they saw, they created. 21 apps focused on everything from convenience to good citizenship were developed virtually overnight in a hackathon hosted by PayPal and Braintree at 1871’s headquarters this past weekend.
In a 24-hour flurry of code, collaboration and caffeine, 21 four-member teams of hackers devised apps in pursuit of the bragging rights as BattleHack Chicago’s winners and a shot at the upcoming World Finals in November. Apps were judged on the technicalities of the code, not necessarily the best business idea, though developers were asked to focus on local problems. Many incorporated Paypal APIs and Venmo SDKs.
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The RePOTr app, developed by Stefan Aleksic, Eson Musabelliu, Nishanth Samala and Ray Perry, tackles the issue of potholes by giving Chicagoans the opportunity to do something besides complain about them. It tracks the locations of potholes in the city, incorporating existing mobile technology to gather that data. Through RePOTr, the city is notified of the potholes once they are located by an accelerometer in smartphones when a user is driving. Using PayPal and Braintree, users can also raise money to develop projects geared toward innovatively solving the pothole problem, or hiring private contractors to fill the holes. Judges declared the team behind this app to be the champions of the Chicago competition.
Another app created over the weekend also used existing technology, through integrating mobile payment service Venmo and facial recognition technology. PayBack, which was ranked second by the judges, allows users to split bills among friends by taking a picture of the individual and running the user’s account, matched through the facial recognition technology, through the app.
Almost Home, developed by a team with only three members and awarded third place, creates a network of neighbors who are willing to accept packages on your behalf when you’re not around. Like the others, it also features mobile payment by compensating your community members for getting the packages.
The two-year-old BattleHack competition has been hosted in several other cities around the world, including Tel Aviv, Berlin, and Istanbul, but this was its first time in Chicago. According to the Chicago Tribune, John Lunn, the senior director of the developer network for both companies and the leader of the competition, wanted to bring BattleHack to Braintree’s hometown. “There are great startups in Chicago. It’s a very fast-growing startup city, and we want to go where the startups are,” he said.
