Report from the past Facebook Developers World Hack Day Moscow

In early September, I received an invitation to send to the hackathon Facebook Developers Hack Day Moscow. Having registered, I got into the list of participants and began to prepare. This is a story about how the event took place, who participated in it, what they represented, etc. Immediately make a reservation that I first participated in such an event, so everything was "in wonder."

Under the cat there are a lot of photos, descriptions of the submitted "hacks" (projects made by participants during the hackathon), links to source codes and video presentations of projects.

Two days before the event, a private group was created on Facebook, where all registered participants were invited so that they could meet, form teams, ask questions to Facebook developers (who were also present in the group and willingly answered all questions). Many precisely then formed their teams.
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The first quest for the participants, even before the start of the event, was suddenly to overcome geographical cretinism: for those who had never been to Digital October (hereafter, simply the center ), finding it in the streets of Bersenevskaya Embankment was not at all easy. In addition, there were no pointers.

After overcoming this first task, at the entrance to the center we were met by pretty girls with lists of participants. Calling the name we received "pass" - the usual stamp on hand. In the very center, upon arrival, all participants were immediately offered to sit comfortably (one could sit in any of the halls) and have a snack. During the entire time of the hackathon, it was possible to eat and drink deliciously: a variety of completely different foods for every taste, drinks, snacks (a la chips, sweets, hamburgers) are absolutely free and in any quantity (enough for everyone and still have left).



At 10:30, everyone was called to the conference room and started the event with reports of Facebook developers and partners of the event. The event was led by Simon Cross, a leading developer from London.



It is worth noting that the organizers of the event took care of those who understand English poorly: you could ask for a special earphone and listen to the simultaneous translation of all the reports. Similarly, all the English-speaking participants of the hackathon (Facebook developers, partners, Mark Zuckerberg himself) listened to the simultaneous translation of Russian speakers.

In the first part of the event, Facebook representatives told about how the network is developing now, how many users it has (955 million active users per month, more than 500 million users every day). The moderator in every possible way emphasized the importance of the hackathon for the social network itself: all Facebook innovations were originally invented and invented on the hackathons. For example, Facebook Timeline was invented by 7 developers on a hackathon that took place inside the company.

Then came the stories about the Open Graph, Graph API, the development of mobile applications for Facebook, all of them you can watch with simultaneous translation (dubbing) on the Digital October website (I strongly advise).





After the reports of Facebook developers, the reports of the hackathon partners went. They are services Deezer , Pusher , 500px and Yandex . Photos . When the time came to dinner, Simon summed up the reports, listed the directions in which we (the hackathon participants) should try to think of something, and in which we definitely shouldn’t do anything. Simultaneously with lunch, the most important stage of the event began: in 6 hours it was necessary to invent and create a useful application / service that would use the Facebook API.





As you can see from the photos, almost all the participants worked for MacBooks. “Not poppies” were very few (out of about 200 participants).

All days before the event and the whole day in the process of the hackathon there was a complete intrigue as to whether Mark Zuckerberg himself would come to the hackathon. Facebook representatives diligently avoided answering this question. And here comes the evening, it's time to register your hacks for the jury and present projects to the public. We are going to the conference hall again, Simon thanks us for participating and says that now we will start watching the resulting hacks. Suddenly, he stops and asks, “Can we first meet one guy?” After these words, Mark Zuckerberg appears on the scene.



Mark, as I expected, was a good-natured, smiling, simple guy. Once again, he thanked us for participating, urged us to more actively develop applications and services that use all the features of Facebook, because this is access to an almost billion-strong audience, which is many times more than all local social networks.

After the welcome speech ( video in English , with translation ), Mark joined the jury, which, in addition to Mark himself and Facebook developers, included:

Jacob Sadchikov - founder of the Quintura search engine
Igor Matsanyuk - founder of the game developer IT Territory, which later became part of Mail.ru Group, former vice-president of Mail.ru Group, investor of more than 35 projects, among which the most famous is Game Insight
Jovan Savovich - the founder of dirty.ru and Leprer blogs
Ilya Zubarev - senior partner of venture fund Runa Capital, founder of Rolsen, Acronis, Parallels



After the presentation of the jury, the hacks began directly. In just 6 hours of the hackathon, 34 hacks were developed. Each participant needed to tell for 2 minutes what his hack was for, how he was useful, what features Facebook uses. It was possible to present their achievements both in English and in Russian.

Presented khaki

Note: video links lead directly to the video of the hack presentation from the event. I give descriptions of all the hacks as I understood them, based on the presentations.

ZeroRPG
link to the game
source
presentation video

A game where no action is required, it’s enough to create a character and then he does everything himself. When writing any status on Facebook, the character of the game is activated and after a while begins to produce various game actions. All achievements are displayed in the Activity block on Facebook.

Narr8
presentation video

A platform for publishing and developing interactive graphic stories.

Carbook
presentation video

A mobile application that recognizes a photo of a car number and by this number finds a car page on Facebook (this means the possibility of meeting and communicating drivers in a traffic jam).

Mobimeter
link to the application
presentation video

The application allows you to evaluate the popularity of different platforms (iOS, Android) among your friends. Allows you to display a kind of rating and share it with friends.

My-apps.com
link to the application
presentation video

Online designer of mobile applications for iOS and Android, which also allows a couple of clicks to add integration with social networks in the created application.

Planner 5D
link to the application
presentation video

Service for creating layouts of rooms and interiors, and exporting them to groups on Facebook.

DooDoo
link to the application
source
presentation video

Application that allows you to find the point of intersection of the interests of the user and the interests of his friends (based on the filled profile fields).

Travolver
link to the application
presentation video

Service and mobile application that allows you to find nearby interesting places with reviews.

BFFQuiz - Best Open Graph app
iPhone source code
server source code
presentation video

Mobile application for iOS, a quiz on knowledge of the facts about your friends (questions are asked based on these profiles of friends).

Gottapee
link to service
presentation video

Service to find the nearest toilets.

Monoclick
presentation video

Expansion under Google Chrome, which allows you to post pictures from sites (including comments) to your profile via the context menu of the browser.

Megaphone
link to service
presentation video

Social application to attract people's attention to various problems. Allows you to send mass messages to users (some kind of our project " Khimki " Good Truth Machine).

Magnifier by m039
source
presentation video

Widget to display information about the search in messages and a horizontal scrollbar so that it is convenient to move to it (the message).

Live typing
presentation video

An application that implements the “live replay” function of how the message text was printed.

Explex
mobile app source code
server source code
presentation video

Mobile application for the exchange of types of recreation, recommendations to them.

We Heart Pics - Best Mobile app by eliaszudin
presentation video

Mobile application that answers the question "what to shoot and where to get ideas for photography." For hakaton added functionality to create contests (photobugs).

ILike hardware button by andbas
source
presentation video

Hardware button that allows you to manually like (by physically pressing the big red button). Button + Arduino + extension for Google Chrome.



Where the hell are you?
source
presentation video

The service shows on the map where your friends are.

authorizeme.in
link to service
presentation video

Authorization service through social networks (a la Loginza, uLogin), which also allows you to connect accounts in several networks into one.

Surfcast
source
presentation video

An extension for Google Chrome, which allows you to share information about what you are currently viewing (which web page), as well as look at what your Facebook friends are currently looking at, who also installed this extension.

Lucky Click
presentation video

The app for drawing prizes stores. How the winner is determined is so incomprehensible to me.

Traveling Brochures
presentation video

The user enters the application, likes any brochure about a tour to any of the countries, and then receives this brochure in a printed version at home.

dragoneternity.com
presentation video

The application will post in your profile your actions in the game.

Real achievments
presentation video

An application that displays your socially useful achievements. As an example, the printing of QR codes was given on certificates of blood donation, after reading which in the user profile a virtual reward is displayed, a prize for donation.

bookeeper
link to the application
presentation video

Application for "lazy readers." After selecting the book of interest to you in the application, it starts automatically posting a new excerpt from the book to your wall once a day.

Hangman game
link to the game
presentation video

Mobile application for Android + browser application, the game "gallows". It is necessary through the application to invite a friend into the game, then during the game you need to guess the word faster than the friend, thereby “hanging” it.

Road 404
presentation video

Mobile application for Android, the game (not sure), showing on a map of the city where you are traveling.

Gulliway Trip Planner
link to service
presentation video

An application in which you mark your planned trips and what you plan to do on these trips (types of recreation, for example). After that, the aggregated data is posted to your profile.

One touch crossing
link to the game for Android
presentation video

A game for Android, in which you need to lead a character through the lines, while not going the same way twice.

Homework
link to service
presentation video

Checking homework without a teacher, monitoring the implementation of homework - all in the form of an application in a social network.

BoostMate - Best Overall app
link to service
presentation video

Service evaluating and dividing your friends into 3 groups:
1) best friends (with the largest social weight; how this weight is calculated, the speaker, unfortunately, did not have time to tell);
2) friends with the greatest number of intersections with you (with whom you interact most of all);
3) friends with a large social weight (those friends that you really like), but with whom you have very little activity (communication, etc.).
After installing the application, it starts sending you update notifications from friends from the third group, thereby encouraging you to communicate more with these people and change their rating in this application for the better.

During the presentation, it turned out to be a live confirmation of the effectiveness of the service : during the presentation, the speaker put a Like and left a comment under the photo of a friend who was offered a service. Immediately after the hackathon ended, the girl’s reaction came:



Life Explorer - Best Game
presentation video

Mobile application, game for different platforms. Draws from instagram pictures devoted to the places where your friends have been, after which you are asked in the form of a quiz to guess the place where the picture was taken.

Slide with Friends
link to the game
presentation video

Unity game. Kolobok rolls through the virtual country, gradually slowing down the movement. From time to time he encounters photos of your friends on his way, which is why he accelerates his movement (depending on your friend’s rating in the game, acceleration may be of different strengths).

Go we go
presentation video

Mobile application + application in the social network. Specify favorite artists, after which it starts to send notifications about upcoming concerts of these artists. You can respond to coming notifications about upcoming concerts by inviting friends (from the app).

Winners in different nominations received Facebook Credits worth $ 250 + AppleTV. The main winner, but BoostMate deservedly turned out to be, got Facebook Credits for $ 250 and a new iPad.





PS: thanks to everyone who is involved in organizing this event! It's hard for me to judge, because this is the first time I've been participating in this, but in my opinion everything went just perfect. The only negative point: the hackathon took place on the same day as the Yandex Yet Another Conference, which made many potentially strong participants unable to participate.

PPS: want to fix / add something - write in a personal.

PPPS: Photo and video taken from the Digital October site.