Developers from all over the world descend onLondonto explore NFC
NFC mobile contactless payments and marketing company, Proxama, has stated its NFC Hackathon held last weekend inLondon,UK, was a resounding success.
Developers from around the world turned up to participate in Proxama's first NFC Hackathon, which showcased the possibilities of the technology, giving media agencies and developers the reigns on creating commercial applications using Proxama's TouchPoint platform.
Over the two day event, teams were given the chance to develop an NFC idea that would enhance interaction between consumer and brand. Each team worked long hours, said Simon Walker, head of business development at Proxama, with many working through the night to bring their idea to life.
“The event was a blinding success,” commentedWalker. “We had people come from all over the world to hack into our system and then design apps for us to run on our NFC platform, TouchPoint, for us to then take back out to our clients.”
Prizes included an all-expenses paid trip to BlackBerry World inOrlando, tickets to seeChelseain the Champions league, Samsung Galaxy tablets, a tour of Google's office, tickets to see artists at the O2, and Proxama's prize, a kickstarter fund of £10,000-worth of development time to make the winning idea a commercial reality.
The winner of the kickstarter category was Team Blue Butterfly who built a demo allowing consumers to login to Wi-Fi networks in hotels, restaurants and other public spaces, simply by tapping their phone to an NFC tag.
The other winners were: BlackBerry Developer Group who created a Tesco's shopper concept; Team Rollercoaster with an idea to streamline the queuing and paying experience at Theme Parks; PillIt with an idea to use NFC to enhance prescriptions by helping remind people to take medications; StreetScreen created an idea around playing games on large digital screen with players using their own mobile phones triggered using NFC tags to control the game.
Walkerremarked that due to the success of this first event, Proxama is already planning a second Hackathon.
