I heard, read and seen them but I’ve never personally been to a hackathon before. I just came back from my first one and it blew my mind what a bunch of talented people can create in just 48 hours!

Melvin (Tinypay) & Augusto (Mashape) - Picture by Job Jacob from thoroughlygood.me

The hackathon was organized by The Next Web Amsterdam as a brand new element in their event. Basically they provided (web) companies the opportunity to sponsor the hackathon which allowed them to present the API in front of a group of ‘hackers’ (developers).

We were lucky and grateful to have our API on the Mashape platform. Mashape was one of the sponsors and they asked Tinypay to present it to the crowd. Melvin took the task upon his shoulders and showed all the developers what the Tinypay API is capable of. We were among the big-boys since the other presentations came from Facebook, Amazon, Blackberry, Mobypicture and more of the familiar faces.

We didn’t have any expectations and were basically praying that someone would work with our API. Since all the other names are so well-known we had a good excuse if nothing would have happened. Fortunately that wasn’t the case… Because 4 developer groups (!) made something using the Tinypay API. Let me stop typing now and show you what wonders people can create within 2 days…

Tinypay iPhone App
Something we’ve all been waiting for… An iPhone app for Tinypay. It’s still rough but a polished version will hopefully be released in the nearby future and we will inform you all about it. It was made by the brothers Peter Tuszynski (@dusker) and Michał Tuszyński (@srgtuszy).

TinyFunding
Funding something you love has never been easier with the TinyFunding iPhone app. Basically you fire up the app and it checks the surroundings using geolocation. It will show all the possible things you can fund within your vicinity. Made by Peter and Christian.

SociaSell
Ever wanted to sell something by simply tweeting? All you have to do is tweet with the hashtag #sociasell and you’re up and running. Amazing? Yes and it was thought of and made by Dave de Fijter (@fijter)

Shoot-N-Sell
Shoot a picture, distribute it through Mobypicture and sell it on Tinypay. It was made by Glenn Wolters (@Glnn) Bam!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cuo0364ABkQ

There’s one thing we’ve learned from this: Be there or be square!
If you want developers to actually do something with your API you have to be there physically to support them in any way possible. This means you should at least send one developer over from your team to the hackathon and, if possible, combine it with a graphical artist / interface designer. This way you can help the teams on the spot, mine great feedback and provide them with stunning visuals.

We’re all looking forward to the next hackathon – thanks guys. Peace!

PS: My apologies for the delay of this post. I caught a real trojan horse flue virus at this hackathon last week – so I was out of the running for a couple of days.
PPS: Special thanks go out to Mashape and The Next Web who made it all possible for us.
PPPS: The picture at the top was made by Job Jacob who has a cool blog and wrote an article about a day at the hackathon.