I am ready for the CreatorCon Hackathon — Are you? #IAmACreator

[allan_leinwand]

My absolute favorite event at my favorite conference is the Hackathon at Knowledge because nowhere else do I get to see a group of passionate developers — some experienced, others brand new to ServiceNow - creating amazing applications from scratch during the course of a single evening. I have been fortunate to be the executive sponsor for this event for the past three years since our inaugural year back in 2012 (anyone else remember Marilyn Monroe and Dean Martin singing?) and I cannot wait to see what teams create this year! I have seen teams create a restaurant table reservation application, a service to avoid nuclear disasters, an application that can serve as a school hub, a pictionary-like game (with drawing tablet integration), an application to monitor the health of your body, an application to help you catch a cable car in my hometown of San Francisco, a blackjack application... to name just a few. These were not just ideas or prototypes, but actual working applications that were fully accessible on the Internet!

You can check out a sampling of prior years entries here. In some cases, the teams building these applications met onsite at Knowledge, formed an impromptu Hackathon team, took their application beyond the event and then further developed it into an application for the ServiceNow Store.

This years Hackathon at Knowledge16 will our biggest event yet located in our brand new Developer Hub. We have also made changes in the way the event is structured — we have introduced categories and increased the number of prizes. You can read all about the details of CreatorCon Hackathon here (did we mention our new awards and cash prizes)?

If you have participated in prior year Hackathons, I look forward to seeing you again. If you have never participated in a Hackathon — I would highly encourage you to do so. All of us have ideas of how we can make our work life, personal life or the world a better place through technology. But sometimes the inertia and barriers whether personal or organizational stops us from finding the time to be creative with the technology we love. Hackathons provide you the ideal environment to explore your idea — a fun environment (DJ, food and beverages), a ServiceNow instance, support from ServiceNow experts and the chance to team with like minded peers with complementary skills. Have an idea but new to the platform — team up with a platform expert and bring your idea to life. User interface expert — a lot of teams will be looking for your skills. Talking of teaming, we have a cool application (built on the ServiceNow Platform, of course) that helps you form your own team or join an existing team.

Fun, learning, free food and beer and a chance to win fame and glory - what more can a developer ask for? I hope to meet you at the CreatorCon Hackathon at Knowledge 16!

P.S: To participate in the Hackathon, just add CreatorCon Hackathon to your schedule in the agenda builder.

P.P.S Hat tip to nsimha for practically writing this post for me