SPARC Opens Registration for Hackathon 4: Pirates of Silicon Harbor

Look out Charleston—Pirates are headed ashore! Pirates of Silicon Harbor, that is. And they’re bringing some of the baddest, fiercest code-hacking buccaneers you can imagine as part of SPARC‘s fourth annual Hackathon—a mobile application development competition called Hackathon 4: Pirates of Silicon Harbor. SPARC, currently ranked by Inc. 500 as America’s fastest growing software company, will hold the competition August 23–24, 2014, at its Charleston headquarters on Daniel Island.

Last year over 1000 people attended Hackathon 3D, including 84 contestants spread out over 34 teams. During the 26-hour event competitors wrote more than 4 million lines of code, with App Life 3 (of Columbia, SC) taking home the Best in Show grand prize. Check out their time lapse video from last year’s Hackathon 3D:

“We see SPARC as the biggest people, idea, and technology incubator in Charleston, and our annual Hackathon is a great way to share this vision with our growing community,” said Eric Bowman, CEO, SPARC. “Hackathon 4 will be our biggest celebration of tech thus far, and will bring together the area’s talent in a fun and creative way.”

Registration for Hackathon 4 is now open and teams of one to three contestants can register at hackathon.sparcedge.com. Spectators and volunteers can also sign up, and the event is still accepting sponsors from businesses seeking involvement opportunities. The full schedule can be found online, but spectators and competitors can expect a fast-paced environment with partying, coding and more.

The festivities begin early on Saturday morning, August 23, with the opening kickoff and idea selection starting at 9:00 am. The next 11 hours, from 10 am–9 pm, teams will take their ideas through development into application, with the two hours from 9–11 pm reserved for building and actually deploying their app. And if that weren’t enough pressure, the party kicks off at 9 pm, and programmers get to soak in the celebration as they finish troubleshooting amidst the fun.

The next morning the public will join the teams for the first round of judging and hands-on demos for spectators starting at 10 am. All attendees are given the opportunity to attend code camp classes on mobile app development, sponsor presentations, or to have fun with attractions like the video game lounge, live music and food vendors. During this process the top ten apps are chosen, and they will demo their work at 3 pm, with voting and awards handed out at 4 pm.

SPARC is a software product development company creating engaging, forward-thinking technology while keeping Team Members at the core of everything they do. With offices in Charleston, South Carolina and Washington, D.C., SPARC provides software development services for the government and commercial sectors, and develops commercial software products for the executive leadership, human resources, big data analytics, and mobile markets. In 2013, SPARC was ranked by Inc. 500 as the 14th fastest-growing private company in the U.S. Learn more at www.sparcedge.com.