May 24, 2011

Announcing XAPFest – A Massive Windows Phone 7 Hackathon in Santa Monica, CA on June 4th 2011

xapfest_black_logoI am pleased to announce something very exciting that Microsoft is doing in my neighborhood of Santa Monica, California: we’re putting together XAPFest, a massive Windows Phone 7 hackathon aimed to bring together startups and mobile developers of all skill levels for a day of creativity and competition.

XAPFest is going down on Saturday, June 4th at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel (directions) – doors open at 9:00am and will close at approximately 10:00pm. There will be opportunities for individuals and teams of developers to win prizes, eat great food, and have fun hacking down by the beach.

XAPFest is free to attend, and anyone can register for XAPFest if they wish to participate.

So here’s the full scoop behind XAPFest.

XAPFest Rules & Conditions

Your goal as a XAPFest participant is to produce a Windows Phone 7 application in a 80-90% complete state by 6:00pm on Saturday, June 4th at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel (see the full schedule and driving directions.)

Here are the rules:

  1. You can get started early, and we ENCOURAGE you to get started before June 4th; install the tools and create a project on XAPFest.com and begin working on your app ASAP.
  2. You can work either as an individual or on a team of up the three people.
  3. Any apps you submit for consideration must not be in the marketplace prior to June 4th (new apps only!)
  4. In order to claim a prize, your app has to be accepted into the Windows Phone 7 marketplace shortly after XAPFest.
  5. You can submit multiple apps in XAPFest, but a team can only claim one prize in total.

 

Install the free Windows Phone 7 development tools early, create an app project, invite your friends, and write updates / post screenshots for your apps often!

If you have any questions about the event or want to know how to get involved (beyond registering and attending XAPFest,) please contact me and I’ll be in touch!

Otherwise, see you on June 4th!

P.S. Take a look at the apps I've created for XAPFest:

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I'm the CTO and founder of Petabridge, where I'm making distributed programming for .NET developers easy by working on Akka.NET, Phobos, and more..