Montreal-based coworking space La Commune is gearing up to host its FirefoxOS Hackathon on September 28-29.
La Commune, a lovely space in the Old Port district that is home of startups like WeRoll, I Can Go Without and Sunmasters Group will present the hackathon “in the truest sense of the word.” The event includes timely labs throughout the day and is presented in collaboration with Mozilla, Mozilla Quebec, Startup Weekend Montreal, and FACIL.
“As Canada’s technological center, it’s essential to position Montréal for what’s coming by offering a channel for emerging open platforms to create bonds. That’s the key behind Foxhack,” said Alexandre Grenier, one of the hackathon’s organizers.
Furthermore, Grenier said that he’s made a personal mission to innovate and help others gain access to technology.
“To bring people and new technologies together in a fun hackathon format makes the best vehicle for that,” he told BetaKit. “With the coming of Firefox OS, we have an opportunity to elevate our technical knowledge while forming social bonds, and the Mozilla people are extremely supportive, so I thought why not, let’s make this happen!”
Firefox evangelist Frédéric Harper will be on hand to kick off the event, talk about the vision of the open web initiative and to assist developers throughout the weekend.
Grenier said that “we’ve had a good amount of sign ups so far,” but he couldn’t confirm what the prizes for the best creations would be. However, given that Mozilla is a sponsor, its a safe bet that a few talented programmers will walk out of La Commune with some nice swag.
The event actually begins on the Friday night, when coders are encouraged to drop by La Commune to take part in an informal happy hour from 5-7 PM. It will formally begins the next morning at 9:30 am, and throughout the day, small learning labs will detail concepts like developer tools, simulators, debugging and Firefox OS devices.
The Sunday will include technical labs on “advanced deployment” techniques and “deployment and marketplace”. Developers will demo their creations and judges will decide who the prize-winners are.
Minimum requirements for the hackathon include skills in operating Firefox, Firefox OS Simulator extension and a code-writing program.
Interested participants can sign up at the Eventbrite page.