SAPO Codebits
Encyclopedia
SAPO Codebits is a hackathon
Hackathon
A hackathon, a hacker neologism, is an event when programmers meet to do collaborative computer programming. The spirit of a hackathon is to collaboratively build programs and applications. Hackathons are typically between several days and a week in length...

 held in Portugal annually, organized and sponsored by SAPO.

The event lasts three days, runs 24 hours a day and includes talks, a programming contest and several satellite activities.

Format

The event lasts three whole days.

The afternoon of the first day and the morning of the second are filled with technical presentations, either from invited speakers or from attendees who submitted a talk that was accepted.

On the afternoon of the second day a programming contest starts. Attendees gather in groups of at least three people and have 24 hours to code something new. After the 24 hours have passed, each group has 90 seconds to present their project.

Projects are then voted on and 10 teams are declared winners and receive prizes.

Some of the projects may receive sponsorship from SAPO to help them reach a mature state.

The building where the event takes place is open 24 hours a day and attendees can sleep inside, if they want to.

Candidate Selection

Those wanting to attend the event are required to fill in a short form on who they are, what they do and why they'd like to attend.

The organizers then go through all the applications and make sure to select only people working with technology directly. This is intended to ensure the audience is comprised solely of tech people, and not marketing or recruitment folks from outside IT.

Selected applicants don't have to pay anything to attend the event.

The attendance is usually composed of developers, systems administrators, web designers, etc.

Competition Rules

Currently, the rules for the 24 hour competition are as follows:
  • Each person can only be part of one team;
  • Each team can only present one project;
  • Each team must comprise at least two elements;
  • If you're presenting a web project, you must provide a URL for the jury to give it a try;
  • Projects must be initiated and developed during Codebits.

Partners

While SAPO makes it a point to organize the whole event by itself, other companies have stepped in as partners, either bringing in gadgets, demos, or other things.

Previous partners have included:
  • O'Reilly
    O'Reilly
    O'Reilly is the Anglicised form of the Gaelic Ó Raghallaigh. It is also the patronymic form of the Irish name Reilly . It is commonly found throughout Ireland, with the greatest concentration of the surname found in County Cavan followed by Longford, Meath, Westmeath, Fermanagh and Monaghan, and...

     - present from 2007 to 2009, with a book stand offering discounts in their books
  • Microsoft
    Microsoft
    Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

     - present from 2007 to 2009 with consoles such as Xbox
    Xbox
    The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console...

     and occasionally with other projects such as the Interactive Canvas
  • PT Inovação - present from 2007 to 2009 with Meo
    Meo (IPTV)
    Meo is the commercial name of a TV subscription service provided by PT Comunicações. The service can be delivered either through IPTV or Satellite link and is available throughout Portugal....

     and other telecom related technologies
  • Cisco
    Cisco
    Cisco may refer to:Companies:*Cisco Systems, a computer networking company* Certis CISCO, corporatised entity of the former Commercial and Industrial Security Corporation in Singapore...

     - present from 2007 to 2009, providing the network solution every year and occasionally showcasing projects such as Hologram solutions
  • Caixa Mágica
    Caixa Mágica
    Caixa Mágica is a Portuguese Linux distribution based on Debian and maintained by Caixa Mágica Software. It uses the .deb format...

     - present in 2007 and 2008; in the later, with a cluster of Magalhães

Previous Editions

  • 2011 - November 10-12 - Pavilhão Atlântico, Lisbon - 800 attendees
  • 2010 - November 11-13 - Pavilhão Atlântico, Lisbon - 700 attendees
  • 2009 - December 3–5 - Cordoaria Nacional, Lisbon - 600 attendees
  • 2008 - LX Factory, Lisbon - 500 attendees
  • 2007 - Gare Marítima de Alcântara, Lisbon - 400 attendees

Keynotes

  • Some of 2010's keynotes
    • Brian Suda
      Brian Suda
      Brian Suda is an American informatician living in Reykjavik, Iceland.Suda received a bachelor's degree in computer science from St. Louis University in 2001 and a master's degree in informatics from the University of Edinburgh in 2003...

       - "Collecting and Visualizing Data"
    • Peter Svensson - "The rise of Server-side JavaScript"
    • Bruno Pedro - "Everything OAuth"
    • Tiago Henriques - "Computer Forensics - The Digital CSI - What, Why and How"
    • Jorge Teixeira - "Mining Online News"
  • Some of 2009's keynotes
    • Kai Seidler - "Think before you develop!"
    • Remy Sharp - "HTML5 JavaScript APIs"
    • Robert Nymann - "JavaScript: From Birth to Closure"
    • Brian Suda
      Brian Suda
      Brian Suda is an American informatician living in Reykjavik, Iceland.Suda received a bachelor's degree in computer science from St. Louis University in 2001 and a master's degree in informatics from the University of Edinburgh in 2003...

       - "Optional is required"
    • Brian LeRoux - "PhoneGap
      PhoneGap
      PhoneGap is an open-source mobile development framework developed by Nitobi Software. It enables software programmers to build applications for mobile devices using JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3, instead of often less-known languages such as Objective-C...

      : Mobile App Developer Zero to Hero"
  • Some of 2008's keynotes
    • Jan Lehnardt - "CouchDB
      CouchDB
      Apache CouchDB, commonly referred to as CouchDB, is an open source document-oriented database written mostly in the Erlang programming language. It is part of the NoSQL group of data stores and is designed for local replication and to scale horizontally across a wide range of devices...

      "
    • Andrew "Bunnie" Huang - "Making the Chumby
      Chumby
      The Chumby is a consumer electronics product made by Chumby Industries, Inc.. It is an embedded computer which provides Internet and LAN access via a Wi-Fi connection. Through this connection, the Chumby runs various software widgets....

      "
    • Jack Moffitt
      Jack Moffitt
      Jack Moffitt is a computer scientist, software developer and entrepreneur. He is co-author of the GNU GPL licensed streaming media server Icecast and often works on software using XMPP, JavaScript and Erlang. He also worked as executive director of Xiph.Org Foundation and developer of Ogg Vorbis...

       - "Exploring XMPP
      Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol
      Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol is an open-standard communications protocol for message-oriented middleware based on XML . The protocol was originally named Jabber, and was developed by the Jabber open-source community in 1999 for near-real-time, extensible instant messaging , presence...

      "
    • Marcus Bauer - "Getting started with mobile devices development - Openmoko
      Openmoko
      Openmoko is a project to create a family of open source mobile phones, including the hardware specification and the operating system. The project was sponsored by Openmoko Inc....

       Freerunner"
    • Mitch Altman
      Mitch Altman
      Mitch Altman is a San Francisco-based hacker and inventor, best known for co-founding 3ware , his pioneering work in Virtual Reality at VPL Research and inventing TV-B-Gone. He is also President and CTO of Cornfield Electronics.-Early life and education:Altman grew up in Rogers Park, Chicago,...

       - "Hardware Hacking area: Make Cool Things with Microcontrollers (and learn to solder)"
    • Peter Svensson - "Practical Thin Server Architecture with Dojo
      Dojo Toolkit
      Dojo Toolkit is an open source modular JavaScript library designed to ease the rapid development of cross-platform, JavaScript/Ajax-based applications and web sites. It was started by Alex Russell, Dylan Schiemann, David Schontzler, and others in 2004 and is dual-licensed under the modified BSD...

      "
  • Some of 2007's keynotes
    • Mike Culver - "Amazon WebServices Architecture" and "Enterprise WebApp development with Tapestry
      Tapestry (programming)
      Apache Tapestry is an open-source component-oriented Java web application framework to implement applications in accordance with the model-view-controller architectural pattern. Tapestry was created by Howard Lewis Ship independently, and was adopted by the Apache Software Foundation as a top-level...

      "
    • Mahesh Prakriya - "IronPython
      IronPython
      IronPython is an implementation of the Python programming language targeting the .NET Framework and Mono. Jim Hugunin created the project and actively contributed to it up until Version 1.0 which was released on September 5, 2006. Thereafter, it was maintained by a small team at Microsoft until...

       and Dynamic Languages on .NET"
    • Jim Purbrick - "Mashing up the Web, Games, Music, Movies, Money and The Laws Of Physics in Second Life
      Second Life
      Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on June 23, 2003. A number of free client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...

      "

Satellite events

Satellite events have included concerts (Wray Gun in 2007, Pornophonique
Pornophonique
Pornophonique is a German electronic duo from Darmstadt, Germany. It was formed by Kai Richter and Felix Heuser. They use a C64 and a Gameboy to produce their trademark 8-bit electronica sound. While guitarist and singer Richter also handles the C64, Heuser is responsible for the Gameboy sounds...

in 2009), a Quiz Show, gaming events and workshops on soldering, lockpicking, 3d printing and other areas.
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