BlackBerry Jam Sessions Warsaw – Summary
BlackBerry Jam Sessions in Warsaw was a great opportunity to show up, make an app, and win! YES! We won one of main prizes of this hackaton 
We feel great, and our belief in games production is growing. This time we learned that it is possible to create a game within 10 hours only! Number of attenders was big enough to fill the whole room. Everyone was very excited about it. Initial preparations gave us a few nervous moments, but atmosphere, people, and hard work of organizers finally prevailed.
Many developers traveled hundreds of kilometers just to show their vision of project. Motivation was the most important factor to finish the challenge. Everyone became very focused just in a moment when the count down clock started. Atmosphere was really nice. We had great support, fantastic food, cookies, and energy drinks!
Developers competed in couple categories: Best Usability Application, Best Game, and Best Jury’s Choice. 15 teams which decided to start in competition, chose the category they felt best at, and started coding. Developers created some games, and usability apps. The idea of hackaton was to create a working app, present it to the audience and jury, show it’s features, and possible business models it could work with in the final version. Every presentation couldn’t last longer than 3 minutes, so we really didn’t have much time to show total potential of our application. Unfortunately, from all teams, couple just didn’t manage to finish their project, or gave up during the contest. It’s a pity, but we greet them, and we hope that next time they will have more luck, and determination!
Finally, when after 10 hours of hard work the timer stopped, everyone nervously performed last changes, tests, and then we waited for the results. The Jury set up the order of presentations. Many apps were really cool, some developers had really nice ideas for their products. Some apps seemed to be well polished, almost a final versions, and it is possible that they may prosper well in BlackBerry or other systems environments.
Our team made a cool, and funny game called “OMG Humans!“. The story, and idea has captivated everyone in the room, especially the Jury, who after presentations has awarded us with one of main prizes in a category “Best Jury’s Choice“!
All teams will get another chance to show what they are capable of. Another hackaton is comming! This time we can get a chance to attend in BlackBerry Jam Europe in Amsterdam in 2013! Sounds fun, isn’t it ;)? I believe we still can be the winners of other hackatons! Why not 😉
BlackBerry logo in courtesy of Black Berry.
Photos by: Piotr Gawle