Stattbad Wedding, venue of the Photo Hack Day.
The best approach to take on a hack day is just to dive in – although that’s probably not recommended at one such event this weekend. The Photo Hack Day starts on Saturday morning at Stattbad Wedding, a former swimming pool built in the early 20th century which is now one of Berlin’s most unique cultural locations.
Bringing together some of Berlin’s most innovative developers, hackers and designers, the event is aimed at building the next generation of original photo applications, encouraging new ideas and promoting quick innovation in app development.
Ramzi Rizk, co-founder and CTO of EyeEm, is one of the event’s organisers. He said: “We have an incredible base of creative and developer talent here in Berlin, and we are inviting everyone to join photo hack day as a platform to build cool stuff together.”
The hack day will include a Q&A session with Twitter in San Francisco, and a “fireside chat” from NYC with Tumblr founder David Karp, reddit’s Alexis Ohanian and Ben Huh, CEO of Cheezburger. There will also be a 60s photo booth where participants can take some cool snaps.
And there’s still time for developers and designers to register. Prizes on offer for the best apps include a trip to London, premium accounts with Twago and Soundcloud and a camera from Lomography. Winners will be selected by a panel of judges on Sunday afternoon.
Service Jam
It’s another busy weekend in Germany’s capital – starting tonight at 6 pm is the Service Jam Berlin. The Service Jam is an “innovation camp” for people interested in service design and creativity which is last until Sunday. It is part of a global event, with the Berlin leg being held in the Fjord office in Kreuzberg. Aiming to create a new service or customer experience in just 48 hours, the participants will make use of user-centered design methods to create their new products.
In between the creative sessions, participants will also take part in inspirational input sessions with guest speakers from the startup industry. At the end of the jam the prototypes will be presented to the public, and a short documentation will be uploaded to a global platform.
App Olympics
It will certainly be a hectic weekend for hackers! The 48-hour App Olymics hackathon and startup bootcamp starts tonight, with the Berlin leg being held at the Ahoy! co-working space in Charlottenburg.
The focus of the event will be on creating the next generation of mobile apps for iOS, Android Windows and the web, with the aim being for competing teams to develop an idea into an actual product.
Startup Tour
Berlin’s first startup tour is also taking place this weekend – the bad news is that today’s event is sold out; the good news is that you can catch up with events with tour guide Derk Marseille’s F@6 radio show, this month coming from the Monoqi office.
The live recording starts at 8pm, and the panel includes Simon Fabich of Monoqi, Fabian Siegel of Lieferheld and Dominik Richter of HelloFresh.de. Arrive early at the fantastic office, a former Dresdner Bank, for the pre-event, with drinks and pizza before the show.