I am excited to announce our involvement in the EDesign Lab Hackathon taking place on June 1 - 2 in New York City. The event is being organized by EDesign Lab and New Visions for Public Schools along with Developers for Good and CodeMontage at the Center for Social Innovation in Chelsea. Register now to participate in the event. 

Join the conversation by tweeting @PearsonAPI, @EDESIGNLABSORG and using #HACKK12.

I'm excited to announce that Pearson will be a sponsor and API partner for the first-ever book publishing hackathon in New York City next week. The 36 hour event will take place at Alley NYC on Saturday May 18 and Sunday May 19, and continuing onto the Book Expo America at the Javits Center on May 31st.

Register for tickets here you won't want to miss out! 

AngelHack 5, #hackdemayo #anglehacksf, just concluded and it was a unique and fun hack living up to the hype! Sumo suits, sushi, churros, puppy copters, ping pong, billiards, street fighter, oh yeah and also over 500 developers, designers, entrepreneurs and creatives.

Part of a series of hack events spread throughout time and space (well, multiple hack events in different cities around the world), the London event was held at Bloomsberg's fabulous offices on the weekend of April 27-28. Great organization ensured that no-one was short of food, drink, power, WiFi or indeed advise for the whole weekend (I think this is the first hack I have attended where there were no network problems !!).

This past weekend, we were at the Manhattan Center in New York for TechCrunch’s Disrupt Hackathon. Pearson was one of the event partner sponsors alongside Facebook, Visa, Foursquare, and many other great companies. The hackathon kicked off on Saturday afternoon and concluded on Sunday morning at 10AM when 165 developers lined up to present 60-second pitches for their applications. (This was not done without the help of ice cream sandwiches, energy drinks, and candy). 

Nine apps were created using Pearson APIs, with the winner of our $500 prize for Best Use of Pearson APIs going to Vocal Vocab. Developers Adesina Lalude and David Idell (pictured above) created an application that paired The New York Times articles with our Longman Dictionary API to help users build an improved vocabulary. We will be featuring the application soon on the Pearson Developers blog - stay tuned. 

The winners were:  

Rambler - allows users to see debit and credit card transactions by location
Learn to Drive - a virtual driving instructor
Radical - create embeddable aestheticlaly pleasing calendars

Other stage highlights include: laser tag, live guitars with Game of Tones, a Scalable Augmented Reality hologram, a drone demo, Bar Power, an unexpected onstage hack of the event, and a developer duo who hacked everyone's applications with Backathon.

Special thanks to the nine teams who used Pearson APIs and to everyone who stopped by the Pearson table. A full list of winners from the hackathon can be seen here.

TechCrunch has annouced the official event schedule and API prizes for the Disrupt Hackathon taking place this weekend. The API Workshop schedule can be seenhere, with the agenda here. I will be onhand for the weekend with my colleague Chris Schoenfeld, where we'll be offering a $500 Prize in Amazon giftcards for the best use of Pearson APIs. 

Tickets to the Disrupt Hackathon are still available here. If hanging out with us is not motivation enough to attend, teams who submit projects will be eligible for free tickets to the TechCrunch Disrupt Conference ($3,000 value)!

Join the conversation on @PearsonAPI and @hhackdisrupt. Look forward to seeing you this weekend!

Last September Gregg had the pleasure of attending TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco on behalf of Pearson, and later this month I'll have the opportunity to experience it for myself in New York! The hackathon kicks off on Saturday, April 27 and concludes on Sunday, April 28 at the Manhattan Center in midtown.

More information about TechCrunch Disrupt can be found here along with ticket links. Get a head start by checking out Pearson APIs (including our brand new Dictionaries API) before the hackathon. Be sure to follow @PearsonAPI on Twitter for updates and to join in on the conversation. 

Looking forward to the event and hope to see you there! 

What happens when you put a bunch of entrepreneurs on a bus? 

This weekend I'll be seeing 30 strangers off for the ride of their lives. StartupBus 2013 is a mobile hackathon on the road to SXSW, and a truly unique experience for entrepreneurs (or buspreneurs as they've been dubbed) to launch a new startup. Check out what Huffington Post's Josh Seefried had to say about his upcoming participation in StartupBus here.

Personally, I can't wait to see what will come out of this journey! Follow @TheStartupBus on Twitter to stay up date on this epic journey!

Last weekend I had the pleasure of participating in CampInteractive's first ever hackathon at General Assembly. Reddit's Alexis Ohanlian hosted the hackathon (dubbed HackInteractive), a fundrasier for the non-profit organization that empowers inner-city youth through the creative power of technology. 

On Saturday, February 16th, students spent the day at General Assembly presenting their problem-solving ideas and mingling with developers. I had some great conversations with the youngsters about their plans for college, career aspirations, and passion for technology. It was truly inspiring!

By the conclusion of the event on Sunday there were 8 projects submitted to address those problems outlined by the student presentations. Clever Text won big at the event by addressing the obstacle faced by English as a second language, along with Class Cartography. Colloquial managed to integrate nearly all APIs (including our Brilliant Series and Longman Dictionary), most notably with the bitly trend map. Check out the live application here. 

HackInteractive was a really great event with an even better message and overall goal, I look forward to participating again in the future. Hats off to Mike Denton and the team over at CampInteractive for changing the world by inspiring our youth. Check out more pictures from the presentations here.  

Mhacks, the completely student-organized hackathon at the University of Michigan kicked off on Friday, February 1st.  550-600 students were shuttled in from UIUC, Purdue, CMU/Pitt/Penn/PSU, and UToronto/UWaterloo in addition those from the University of Michigan for largest student hackathon to date!

By the time the 36 hours of hacking ended on Sunday, February 2nd at 11AM, there were a total of 128 projects submitted with 82 of those completed for demos. Presentations were done "science fair"-style with developers set up at tables to demo their applications, and judges walking about taking notes on their favorite pitches. 

The judge's top 10 demos were then presented to the public for judging. The overall winning team speakeasy used the Longman Dictionary and Ribbon API to create a web app that "to allows users to chat with someone that speaks a foreign language in your own native language!" Learn more about the application here. 

Be sure like MHacks to stay in the loop for all upcoming events. Many thanks to the University of Michigan student organizers and especially Jack Wink for doing a great job representing Pearson onsite.