Developer Week Hackathon
DeveloperWeek (Feb 17 - 19, 2021) is the world’s largest developer expo and conference series, including targeted conferences for specific developer topics such as AI, APIs, and product. The conference in February was the flagship conference and, like so many events this past 12 months, it was 100% virtual.
The Hackathon
For the week preceding the event, Developer Week hosted a Hackathon inviting teams to submit projects to win prizes sponsored by various developer-focused companies. Anvil sponsored 2 DeveloperWeek Hackathon prizes, and invited teams to submit projects that used Anvil’s APIs to address the following challenge.
We offered generous prizes to teams that could build the most novel and impactful projects using the APIs provided by Anvil.
- 1st Place
$2000 cash + $1250 in API credits (500 Etch e-sign requests 5000 PDF generation / filling request)
- 2nd Place
$1000 cash + $625 in API credits (250 Etch e-sign requests 2500 PDF generation / filling request)
The Submissions
Over 600 developers participated in the hackathon and Anvil received over 24 project submissions for the Anvil sponsored prizes. The projects covered a wide range of industries and interesting use cases, from helping doctors minimize prescription errors with a digital prescription process MedicBot to helping streamline court filings Court.ly and incorporation filings InstaCorp.
With paperwork being a ubiquitous problem and so many amazing submissions, it was difficult to pick just two winners.
Judgement Criteria
Anvil decided to judge projects on 3 criteria:
- Novelty of the way Anvil’s API is used - how creative is the solution? Is it solving a painful paperwork problem? Is it a use case we have never seen before?
- Coverage of Anvil API endpoints used - how many API endpoints does the solution use? Are the endpoints incorporated at various stages??
- Completeness of the project - Does it work? Does the solution just do one simple thing or does it address the entire problem?
 
Auto Arbi-Trader - Anvil Hackathon Runner Up
A digital solution to streamlining the auto sales process, from authenticating sellers and buyers to completing titling paperwork to signing the documents.
What we liked: Auto Arbi-Trader
The DMV is notorious for being slow, inefficient, and an all around painful experience. Buying a car is an exciting experience, but the actual paperwork required to complete a sale is arduous.
Auto Arbi-Trader uses technology to authenticate users, gather required information to complete the paperwork (Anvil PDF filling API), and then use the authenticated session to certify and sign the completed documents (Anvil Etch E-sign API). The project also used multiple Anvil endpoints as well as the TypingDNA APIs to address a painful experience common to all car buyers across America.
Video: Auto Arbi-Trader
 
Consent - Anvil Hackathon Winner 🎉🎉🎉
A touch-free way to check-in at a conference, doctor's office, the gym, or any other check-in process and then easily accept and sign consent documents.
What we liked: Consent
By far one of the most novel ways of using Anvil we have ever seen.
The check-in process is completely touch free and uses NFC to communicate between two devices. Once connected, information is securely shared between the two devices, and the user only has to review and sign the relevant documents.
We also liked how broadly applicable the solution is; it is not limited to a specific set of forms, but any set of forms that need to be reviewed and signed.
Finally, the completeness of the project was very impressive. The solution consisted of both a kiosk application and a mobile application. This is the first time, as far as we know, that the Anvil integration has been used from within an iOS Swift application.
Video: Consent
Closing Thoughts
Congratulations to our two prize winners and to everyone who submitted a project. Anvil looks forward to sponsoring and even hosting more Hackathons. PDF and paper are the bottleneck holding back digital progress in many industries. We can’t wait to find more impactful and creative use cases for our Anvil APIs and we look forward to supporting our developer community.
Additional Resources
- Anvil Developer Page - www.useanvil.com/developers
- Anvil API documentation - www.useanvil.com/docs
If you have questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at developers@useanvil.com