Hacking code, eating pizza and drinking beer and tackling some of New York City’s biggest social challenges — it’s just another day at the eBay Inc. New York City office!
This past weekend, eBay Inc. hosted the opening hackathon of the fourth annual NYC BigApps competition at its Manhattan-based R&D center. The two-day event drew over 100 people, including representatives from city government, New York City-based startups and social innovators, various incubators and accelerators and even some peer companies and media.
Organized by the New York City Economic Development Corporation and powered by CollabFinder.com, the event is the city’s premier open data software competition and one of the world’s largest civic technology programs of its kind. This year’s opening session focused on hackers leveraging technology to address some of the city’s biggest social challenges, and participants competed for $150,000 in cash and other prizes for creating the best apps across four subject areas: Jobs and workforce mobility, healthy living, lifelong learning, and cleanweb: energy, environment and resilience.
eBay Inc. was pleased to leverage the company’s space and resources for the event, and looks forward to supporting social innovators throughout the competition and beyond. We believe in the power of business to achieve positive social impact and are excited to extend that vision in our support of NYC BigApps.
Stay tuned for updates as the competition continues!