We are thrilled to announce the DigitalOcean App Platform Hackathon on DEV! 🎉

From now through January 10th, you’ll have the opportunity to win some seriously sweet prizes for building an application using DigitalOcean’s new App Platform. In the process, you’ll get to know the DigitalOcean App Platform and walk away with a shiny new app to your name ✨

Categories

The DigitalOcean App Platform Hackathon on DEV is calling for projects in the following four categories:

• Personal Site/Portfolio: Build a personal portfolio site as your submission. Don’t be afraid to get creative and show off your work and experience in a fresh way
• Program for the People: Build an application related to mental health, a public service (like a COVID-19 spread tracker), or a feel-good app to ring in the New Year right
• Built for Business: Build something that could become commercial and earn big bucks. This could be anything from a professional tool to something that’s a part of your very own business
• Random Roulette: Build a wacky app that doesn’t fit into one of the categories above. With this category, we are looking for some truly silly and/or fun submissions. The possibilities are endless!

What is the App Platform from DigitalOcean?

DigitalOcean’s App Platform helps you build your applications quickly and with fewer distractions. With it, you can push code to production in just a few clicks while DigitalOcean handles the infrastructure, app runtimes, and dependencies.

Learn more about App Platform here, read the docs here, and find some tutorials here. Here's a video on how to build, deploy, and scale your first app on App Platform.

A few examples of applications built on the DigitalOcean App Platform:

• Blog w/ Strapi and Next.js: Demo - GitHub Repo
• Guest Book App w/ Laravel and React: Demo - GitHub Repo
• RSS Reader with Django and React: Demo - GitHub Repo
• Laravel Blog: Demo - GitHub Repo
• More Sample Apps

We cannot wait to see how you approach this fun challenge — and the amazing applications you come up with!

Why Participate?

The DigitalOcean App Platform Hackathon on DEV is a fantastic (and free) opportunity to get better acquainted with a new Platform-as-a-Service tool so you can focus on what you do best — develop software! The four categories (listed above) will help you demonstrate your creativity and software acumen while learning and having some fun.

If that’s not incentive enough, we also have some prizes you won’t want to miss.

Prizes

4 Grand Prize Winners (one in each category):

• $2,000 USD gift card or equivalent
• $300 USD credit to the DEV Shop
• DigitalOcean Swag Pack
• DEV Sticker Pack
• DEV “App Platform Hackathon” grand prize profile badge
• A Zoom meet-and-greet with DigitalOcean’s CEO, Yancey Spruill

Runner-Up Prizes (10 Total):

• $200 USD gift card or equivalent
• $150 USD credit to the DEV Shop
• DigitalOcean Swag Pack
• DEV Sticker Pack
• DEV “App Platform Hackathon” runner-up profile badge

Participants (with a valid project):

• DEV Sticker Pack
• DEV “App Platform Hackathon” participant profile badge

How to submit your app and enter the DigitalOcean App Platform Hackathon on DEV

• Select a category for your project (listed above)
• Create a new DigitalOcean account (or use your existing account! Note: a credit card will be required at sign-up, but you will not be charged. Please refer to these FAQs for more info.
• Create an app using DigitalOcean’s App Platform that falls under one of the listed categories
• Fill out this form to get a $50 credit for DigitalOcean, good for 60 days from the date of redemption.
• Use one of the following permissive licenses for your code: MIT, Apache, BSD-2, BSD-3, or Commons Clause.
• Use this post template to officially submit your application for the hackathon
• Be sure to publish your submission on DEV between December 10 and January 10 (11:59 PM PT/8 AM January 11, UTC), and provide your app’s URL, screenshot, description, and source code

Bonus points for…

• Documenting your app’s progress across multiple posts with the final post serving as your official submission (hint: use series: [“series name”] in the markdown heading of all your App Platform Hackathon posts to link all content in a series)
• Using the Deploy to DO button in your app (info here )

** ”Bonus points” means we will give submissions with these criteria priority when selecting winners.

Additional Rules

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Open only to 18+. Contest entry period ends January 10, 2021, 11:59 pm PST/ 8 AM UTC on January 11, 2021. Contest is void where prohibited or restricted by law or regulation. All entries must be new projects and created during the hackathon period. For Official Rules, see Contest Announcement Page and General Contest Official Rules.

Community Support

To ask any questions about DigitalOcean's App Platform throughout the hackathon, leave a comment in the App Platform Hackathon help thread

If you run into any additional questions about DigitalOcean’s App Platform, you can also reach their team by asking a question here

We also have a community discussion thread where you can share your ideas and get suggestions on improvements from the DEV community as you build your app. We encourage you to share your progress along the way to generate more excitement and benefit from additional community feedback suggestions.

Important Dates 🗓

• December 10, 2020: Hackathon Begins
• January 10, 2021: Hackathon Submission Due at 11:59 PM PST
• January 15, 2021: Hackathon Winners Announced

We can’t wait to see what you build. Happy coding!