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Jess Lee for The DEV Team

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Announcing the DigitalOcean App Platform Hackathon on DEV!

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

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

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. Donā€™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 thatā€™s a part of your very own business
  • Random Roulette: Build a wacky app that doesnā€™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?

DigitalOceanā€™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:

We cannot wait to see how you approach this fun challenge ā€” 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 ā€” develop software! The four categories (listed above) will help you demonstrate your creativity and software acumen while learning and having some fun.

If thatā€™s not incentive enough, we also have some prizes you wonā€™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 ā€œApp Platform Hackathonā€ grand prize profile badge
  • A Zoom meet-and-greet with DigitalOceanā€™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 ā€œApp Platform Hackathonā€ runner-up profile badge

Participants (with a valid project):

  • DEV Sticker Pack
  • DEV ā€œApp Platform Hackathonā€ 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 DigitalOceanā€™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 appā€™s URL, screenshot, description, and source code

Bonus points forā€¦

  • Documenting your appā€™s progress across multiple posts with the final post serving as your official submission (hint: use series: [ā€œseries nameā€] 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 )

** ā€Bonus pointsā€ 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 DigitalOceanā€™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 šŸ—“

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

We canā€™t wait to see what you build. Happy coding!

Latest comments (191)

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shubhampatel33 profile image
ShubhamPatel33

How will the team of DEV contact us for swags and stuff after we have submitted the article ??

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graciegregory profile image
Gracie Gregory (she/her)

We will be emailing participants over the next two weeks!

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geobrodas profile image
Georgey

Winners are announced?

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bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev

Hi there šŸ‘‹, not yet, but it should be done soon.

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geobrodas profile image
Georgey

Roger thatšŸ¤ŸšŸ¼

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khushi0704 profile image
KHUSHI JAIN

can I still submit tomorrow?

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graciegregory profile image
Gracie Gregory (she/her)

Hi there! Our submission window is now closed. We hope to see a submission from you in a future hackathon here on DEV!

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priyanshupardhi profile image
priyanshu pardhi

Successfully built a Portfolio website but can't able to launch due to some error related to the card šŸ˜„.
link to my repo: github.com/priyanshupardhi/Portfol....

please help me with this

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olusola profile image
olusola ak

Super late to the game with less that a day till deadline but excited to get on board.
Lets get coding and good luck to everyone :)

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neilblaze profile image
Pratyay Banerjee • Edited

Hey @chris__sev šŸ‘‹
I along with my friend made a game on phaser.js during a hackathon on 12th Dec'20. Can I publish that project under Random Roulette #dohackathon ?

We started working on that on 11th Jan'20, it was at an unfinished state so we couldn't submit in there, but now the game is ready :D

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gauravdagde profile image
gauravdagde

After filling the form for 50$ credits, how soon I can receive that credit in digital ocean account?

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bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev

The official statement is 2 business days, but in most cases, it is much sooner.

You can still start building your app and once you have your credit it will cover the expenses.

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gauravdagde profile image
gauravdagde

Okay.

Thank you.

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milindsingh profile image
Milind Singh • Edited

My entry for hackathon
dev.to/milindsingh/adapttive-com-a...

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bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev

Looks great! Well done šŸ™Œ

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milindsingh profile image
Milind Singh

Thanks

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abidishajia profile image
Shajia Abidi

I see there are videos for Laravel and React, I was wondering if there's a tutorial or a video for deploying MERN app on Digital Ocean's App Platform. I tried to deploy it, but I get this error 'Cannot GET /' on jobamatic-oftsr.ondigitalocean.app/. I was wondering if someone can help me with it.

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ayanb profile image
Ayan Banerjee

Hi, even though I am not a MERN stack developer, I would like to point out that you can get some debug info in the apps platform logs which can aid in fixing the issue.

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ayanb profile image
Ayan Banerjee

Hi, my project MediDoc requires the admin credentials in order to explore all the features. I am wondering whom should I share the credentials with after submission?

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samnalkande profile image
Sasmit nalkande

Why this contest is 18 + .
It would be better if there were no age restriction
šŸ˜¶šŸ˜¶šŸ˜¶

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imanishbarnwal profile image
Manish Kumar Barnwal

Can we participate in the team? If yes how many members can a team have?

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bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev

Hi there šŸ‘‹

Yes, you can participate in a team as well. However, note that you will need to split the price.

Also, I believe that only one submission post is needed from the team. But you need to include all participant usernames within the post and you'll all receive badges!

For more information make sure to check out the official rules here:

dev.to/page/official-hackathon-rules

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harshilparmar profile image
Harshil Parmar

How to take part as a team ?? And how many members are allowed in a team??

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bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev

Hi there šŸ‘‹

Yes, you can participate in a team as well. However, note that you will need to split the price.

Also, I believe that only one submission post is needed from the team. But you need to include all participant usernames within the post and you'll all receive badges!

For more information make sure to check out the official rules here:

dev.to/page/official-hackathon-rules

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harshilparmar profile image
Harshil Parmar

Thanks Bobby šŸ™
One last question : Is valid to take part with already built app by myself with some changes ?

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bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev

Yes, I believe that this should be ok as long as the app is deployed to the DigitalOcean App platform!

Also, make sure to include the Deploy Button for some extra points!

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r0b profile image
Robert Osborne

Great post! I can't wait to participate! Is there anything to take into account if you are working on a project with another person?
We both have dev.to accounts but what do we need to do to both get the badge? :)

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bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev

Hi there šŸ‘‹

I believe that only one submission post is needed from the team. But you need to include all participant usernames within the post and you'll all receive badges!

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r0b profile image
Robert Osborne

Easy enough! Thank you!

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bobbyiliev profile image
Bobby Iliev

No problem! Good luck and have fun building šŸ™Œ

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circa10a profile image
Caleb Lemoine

Absolutely. My entry had 3 components. 2 using docker files and 1 using a buildpack.

dev.to/circa10a/the-mcbroken-dashb...

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