This past weekend, 17th November 2012, Nairobi saw a BlackBerry Hackathon at the 88MPH StartUp Garage for a 10 hour coding session presided over by Louis Gert, Luca Sale – Developer Relations for Blackberry EMEA, Lany Sommers – Business Development and Community Manager for Blackberry EMEA and Michael Weitzel who is the hardcore C++ and Native Dev guy from Blackberry. These guys have a wealth of experience in all matters RIM. You can find all the pictures on Facebook here and there.
Here is a brief description of the apps that were demo’d at the Blackberry Jam Sessions together with who won what:
Kaizen – Easy Shop App – App that picks goods and puts them in a trolley and then has people deliver it to you. The app owner will be on an 80:20 basis to share revenue. Revenue stream comes from the transaction and advertising fee.
NeneKawgwheelz – A HTML5 based game called PicMix – based on the canvas and the api that allows on to upload any picture and then makes it into a puzzle that you change into a puzzle and then asks you to solve. The game will make money from allowing you the upload functionality. User generated content will be great for this app. It looks like it could be a good one when the pro version is enabled.
League of Extra Ordinary Gentlemen – Travelous – An App that offers standard a social travelling experience that compares your life back at home and the city which you travel to comparing your original location. Social profiles will be included in the application. Business model will be on demand with sponsored content and posters in public places to push acquisition. The app compares user information on the user side and matches it to life back at home. This App won the Best Design category.
Loco Tender – tendering made easy on a digital system and one that you can see online and on mobile. Has a list of all the tenders that have been subscribed by a single person. You can check on emails and sms and then get emails either weekly or daily.
Check it by Check IT – check it addresses the issue of counterfeit goods by entering a code into a text box and then it check against a database that allows one to see if a product is fake or not. Advertising is by word of mouth and through media ads. Issue may be the receptiveness of the app because one may have to scratch something instead of using a serial number. This app won the Best Idea category.
Agawa by Adebayor – A framework that allows one to take pictures of their family members and keeps track of their budgets.
Tech Echo by Kweli Mukeli – allows you to meet guys and buy stuff from them. Makes money by ads with premium members like Samsung. Makes money from sponsored events. This App won the overall Best App of the Hackathon. This means that team members from Tech Echo gets to travel to Europe to take part in BB Jam Sessions in Europe on February 5th and 6th in an all expenses paid trip from Blackberry’s budget. WOW!! This is HUGE!
Konnekt4Wild by Konnekt4 – A game that allows you to align you to sort your objects on a grid with some animals. Future milestones will allow one to play via Bluetooth or online. The game is a simple one that will let you use logic. The game would probably cost one dollar per download and the more the levels, the more you pay. This app won the Best Game category.
BlackSlash by Blackguru – onsite management that allows on to register employees using nfc. It allows ont to track employees even in the field. There will be a trial version. Will allow employers to see what time their employees check in according to time stamps on their NFC cards.
Vazimeter App by Code Bangers – is an app that allows a business analyzes how their products are moving. The more you use the data the better the system gets predicting your buying and it then learns what products are moving most.
There was no winner in the Best eCommerce App because no App made the cut for this category.
The judges of the day were Mbugua Njihia from Symbiotic, Mem Maina, Lany Sommers from Blackberry and Gert Louis van der Walt from SouthAfrica. He is the guy that helps Blackberry set up and deploy AppLabs all over Africa. 
