Deutsche Telekom, Evernote Join Forces for Massive Berlin Hackathon

By David Knight |

Hold onto your hacking hats – Berlin is gearing up for what promises to be its biggest and best hackathon ever courtesy of Deutsche Telekom. The telco giant, which has become increasingly active in the city’s startup scene in recent months, is officially opening its new partnering office space near Nollendorfplatz.

And to entice Berlin’s best hackers in, the event – which takes place from April 5-7 and is being organised together with Silicon Allee – will use APIs from Evernote and DeveloperGarden, among others.

Evernote will even fly in some of its experts from San Francisco specifically for the hackathon, while the prizes on offer for the best teams include iPads and other gadgets. In addition there will be the usual array of t-shirts etc, with more big prizes being announced in the coming weeks.

The weekend will kick off on Friday with a community coding warmup from Freeformers, a British organisation which introduces underprivileged people to technology, and which will host a day of teaching coding skills to those who have never coded before and would not ordinarily have the opportunity to learn how.

Then on Friday evening the hackathon proper will get under way with an introduction and welcome drinks. Hacking will start at 9am on Saturday and will go on until midnight, with the finishing touches added on Sunday before the presentations and award ceremony begin at 3pm.

The new space, at Winterfeldtstrasse 21, is part of Deutsche Telekom’s Innovation Through Partnering program which has seen it team up with Spotify, iZettle and Box among others. DeveloperGarden, meanwhile, is its developer ecosystem portal which offers a range of components, web services, tools and APIs for smart and efficient software development.

People from all the event’s partners – including Berlin startup Moped – will be on hand to hold workshops and offer advice hackers.

It’s free to take part in the event, but space is limited – sign up here to secure your place now.