We’re still learning to make our next hackathons even better for you guys, and we’re sorry for all the various mishaps that happened during the event – things like dodgy internet connections. Anyway, to round things up, here is an infographic of the Bandung Hackathon in terms of who took part and what people were chattering about on Twitter during the event. One of the top five words discussed on Twitter under our hashtag was “Pizza.” We guess you loved that surprise we gave you – well, courtesy of our sponsor Softlayer, to be precise!

Looking over the apps that the assembled 500+ developers made in 100+ teams, it’s interesting to see that Android or web apps were the priority – and that more opted to develop for Windows Phone than for iOS.

Thank you to the Piktochart team for making this infographic for us. We’ve put the embed code below if you’d like to republish it.

Embed code:

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/uuHcT.jpg" title="Startup Asia Bandung Hackathon 2012 in an Infographic" width="680" height="4643"/>

After all the coffee, snacks, and code-crunching that more than 600 developers went through at the 24-hour hackathon at Startup Asia Bandung, came the highly-anticipated demo day. All the developers had the chance to present their products to the 11 challenge sponsors, and the top teams then did a 90-second pitch in front of the whole audience – and our judges – at the Startup Arena segment.

And here are the winners for the Startup Asia Bandung Hackathon in each of the many API-oriented challenges that were set:

East Ventures Alpha, Tiket, and Softlayer Challenges

Aqsath Rasyid, Azby Luthfan, Tito Daniswara, and Puja Pramudya (Team 6) impressively became the only team to win three sponsor challenges: ones from East Ventures Alpha, Tiket, and Softlayer. So we’ve grouped those three challenges here. The team built a Windows 8 app [Updated: correction!] for collaborative trip planning.

Lazada Challenge

There were two winners of the Lazada challenge, which tasked teams with building a Lazada Indonesia native design for Blackberry.

• 1st winner: Bilhasry Ramadhony (Team 38).
• 2nd winner: Basytyan Kardinal Pratama, Lailatuzzahro, Lutfiah Hayati, Aonillah, and Jade Marsha Pricillia (Team 13).

GEPI Challenge

The idea behind the GEPI challenge was a bit different to all the others – to fight piracy using any kind of mobile app and platform. The winners for this unique challenge were Lugas Adhi Prasetyo, Aulia Ahmad Nur Utomo, Setyo Artanto, and Aprianto Dwi Atmaji (Team 33). They built a ‘spot the differences’ Windows Phone game called “KW12.” The game tells a story about a burglar who stole and copied different kinds of products, and the police must now uncover which products are genuine and which are fake.

Teamie Challenge

William Sanjaya, Indri Yunita, and Chandra (Team 54) won this education-oriened challenge. They built a Blackberry app that enables users to create and learn through flashcards. An honorable mention goes to Takdir, Amir, Ana, Vendi, Fahmi, and Bayu from Team 35 who were really close to winning this challenge.

Sent.Ly Challenge

Deni Lukmanul Hakim, acting as a one-man team, won this challenge with his web-based app. He made GroupsBe, which enables users to better control their mailing lists by doing things like controlling the messages they want to receive.

SixReps Challenge

Team 32, which consists of Walesa Danto, Arif Setiawan, Dian Hadiana, and Widhian Bramantya won this challenge with their mobile app called “BodyGuide.” The app will help suggest and schedule the kind of workout that you need, based on your body height and weight.

DeNA Challenge

DeNA chose Annas Armanto’s and Hendra Gunawan’s (Team 41) Android zombie game as the winners of this challenge. Uniquely, you need to unleash some rapid finger swiping actions to kill each of the zombies. Toshihiko Suyama from DeNA thought that the swiping concept was really interesting.

Cacoo Challenge

Tri Sundara chose to undergo six challenges alone at the Hackathon, in the end winning one of them, which is the Cacoo challenge. He built an Android app to help people play Futsal together. The app allows the user to invite people to play together, and to also work on the team formation and strategy using the Cacoo API.

Softlayer Challenge

There were three winning teams for the Softlayer challenge. The challenge required the participants to develop products using Softlayer’s infrastructure.

• 1st winner: Yudhi Karunia Surtan, Bramantyo Dony Aribowo, Dwi Priyohutomo, and Ferdhi Adrian (Team 4).
• Runners-up: Deni Rohimat, Daeng Rosanda, Ibnu Sina Wardy, Rahadian Ahmad, and M. Ray Rizaly (Team 106) and the same Team 6 that won both the Tiket and East Ventures Alpha challenges.

Kotagames Challenge

Kotagames gave away three Macbook Airs as prizes to three teams yesterday. The winning teams made interesting feature phone games, they are: “Battle of The Bands” by Team 20, “Tatao” by Team 31, and a historical game to fight off the invaders from Indonesia made by Team 39.

Team 20 consists of Ecky Putrady and Dimas Tri Ciputra. The four-man team of Jason Christian, Ericko Yaputro, Thomas Simpson, and Michael Setiawan Suhardjono formed Team 31. Vicky Falurrahman, Dennis Adriansyah, Supradi Sitepu, and Damas Nawanda made up Team 39.

Startup Arena

Besides the sponsor challenges, we also held our trademark Startup Arena competition. This time, each finalist only had 90 seconds to pitch their products. In the end, everybody took more than 90 seconds to speak their mind on the stage, but we’re cool with that. Three winners were chosen by judges Andy Zain from the Jakarta Founder Institute, Hera Laxmi Devi S. from XL Axiata, and Toshihiko Suyama from DeNA. Here are the winners:

• 1st winner: Taisuke Oe (who flew all the way from Japan!), R. Alviyan, Jayadiars, and Juni Putra (Team 56). They built an Android game called “Finger Twisters.” The game’s title echoes the gameplay concept very much, as it’s a Twister game played with your fingers. Interestingly, this game is meant to help users to ‘touch hands’ with their potential significant others.
• 2nd winner: Edwin Lunando, Samuel Enrico Wijaya, Georgius Rinaldo, and Unggul Bhakti Muhammad (Team 28). They built an Android-based game called “Startup Story,” in which the users will build their startup with their friends in the game. Interestingly, this game also tried to tackle the GEPI challenge, where the users could opt to buy genuine or pirated products to run the company. The choice will then be automatically shared via social networks so that everyone will know what products you bought in the game.
• 3rd winner: Ecky Putrady and Dimas Tri Ciputra (Team 20). This is the same team that won the Macbook Air from the Kotagames challenge. So it was a good day for these guys.

Congratulations again to all the winners – we’re very proud of you! We would also like to send our warmest gratitude to all participants, spectators, crew members, judges, and media partners and sponsors for making the hacking experience even more awesome.

We hope to see you again at the next Startup Asia!

[Related: Hackathon at Startup Asia Bandung: 600 Developers, 128 teams, 24 Hours of Fun ]

Disclosure: East Ventures Alpha is an investor of Tech in Asia. See our ethics page for more information.

Hey guys, here’s the presentation deck for the pitch briefing earlier. All the best. May the best teams win!

Our Startup Asia Bandung Hackathon finally kicked off yesterday. More than 600 developers have signed up, forming 128 teams who will code and design at the Landmark Convention Hall in the city for 24 hours. Though we had some problems with the internet connection (which is very common in Indonesia) everyone was still able to code their hearts out to beat the challenges set by our sponsors.

The event started smoothly with a lot of developers coming early to the event. Some developers came with their teammates while others chose to come alone and partner with one of the available teams there. Surprisingly, most of the participants aren’t even from Bandung. There are folks coming from Jakarta, Bogor, and Depok. We even had one participant who flew all the way from Japan to compete in this hackathon. Here are some interesting facts about the participants we’ve gathered so far:

The All Female Team of I-Tech

There are around 50 participants coming from the Jakarta-based I-Tech community. The all-female team from I-Tech said that the high number of participants made the event both fun and intimidating. This is the first hackathon for the girls, and they hope to learn a lot from this competition. They plan to build a banking-related app here. They’re not yet sure what challenge they want to beat.

Keisuke Who Flew All the Way From Japan!

We also have an interesting participant who came all the way from Japan to compete in the hackathon: Keisuke. This guy came to Bandung alone and was looking for a UX designer. He is looking to build an interesting Android game.

Keisuke on the right

Student Developers

We talked to two groups that come from the University of Indonesia. Not only did they share the same table, but they also shared the same enthusiasm for the competition – they all looked very busy with their laptops even before the event had started. The teams are looking to build a traditional mobile game called “Gobak Sodor” and a web-based application to educate children with games. They will go with the flow regarding the challenge they plan to beat.

All-Mac Users Team

This one is interesting, there were two teams whose weapons of choice ran on Macintosh. They were all sitting at the same table, but they came from two different cities: Jakarta and Bogor. The two teams called themselves the “Anargya” and “Flockstarter.”

They both plan to take on the Tiket challenge. Anargya will create an application that enables users to easily invite their friends to watch a movie together. Flockstarter aspires to create a social network for travelers to encourage people to travel more. Anargya and Flockstarter explained that the beautiful user interface, flexibility with Linux web servers, and virus-free features are the reasons they chose to use Macintosh.

Here’s some pics from the hackathon:

And for your information, here’s the list of 128 groups who are competing in this hackathon:

More coming from them later today!

PS: We would like to thank our sponsors and supporters for making this event happen: KotaGames, XL, Biznet, DeNA, Softlayer, Cacoo, Teamie, Sent.ly, Vserv, GEPI, SixReps, Tiket, Lazada, Intel, and East Ventures Alpah. Stay tuned for the highly anticipated demo day later!

There’s only one day to go.

Developers, as you all know, our upcoming Bandung hackathon presents many challenges and provides a number of APIs to work with. And of course, there are lots of prizes too. You might be confused about picking which challenge fits your team the best. But we’re here to help. Many of the API providers will be there in the hackathon to help you code.

I spoke to Kotagames’s Vincent Wang about how they plan to help the developers who join the hackathon, especially with its own challenge.

What kind of help will you guys have for developers in the hackathon?

Our CTO, Heng Shing Kae, with be there along with another Indonesian engineer to help out the developers with our challenge. Our game director Felix will give a presentation in Bahasa Indonesia to teach developers about what makes a good mobile social game!

Could you please give a brief summary of your challenge and the prizes?

Our challenge is simple. Build a fun mobile social game using KotaGames API [1] and development environment. Prizes will be one Macbook Air, plus internship opportunities for selected members of three different teams.

And, what is your judging criteria? Do you have any tips for competitors?

Judging criteria will be based on gameplay, the game core cycle, the UI, understanding of the Kotagames API, and lastly technological knowledge.

Kotagames’ is just one of many challenges that are available for you. You can see the full list of the Hackathon Challenges here. Pick one and get moving!

And if you need further inspiration, check out these 4 tips for competing in a hackathon.

Dear developers who are joining our Startup Asia Hackathon this weekend, I’m sure you have prepared your guns, gathered up your team, and picked the challenges you want to compete in. The hackathon is just around the corner, so I hope you’re focused and ready.

But just in case you need some presentational and strategic pointers for our Bandung event, let me share some hackathon tips I found when I got myself lost on Quora last night.

These tips come from John Sheehan (the superbly-titled developer evangelist at Twilio) and we think they’re so great and helpful we’re just going to share John’s top tips with you here. But please do check out the original post as well because it’s full of useful ideas from all sorts of people in the comments section.

Show up ready to play

The moment pitches are over and teams are formed you should be ready to push code to a live, publicly addressable server within minutes. Do not waste your first few hours fighting with hosting account setup, dev environment setup, creating accounts on your APIs of choice, etc. Register a domain using a made up word and use it as your project’s code name (in fact, don’t spend two seconds discussing names before building anything, it will come naturally and you’ll have a code name to fall back on).

Designers are king

The key to winning a hackathon is a good demo. Almost universally the best demos not only work but look good. Designers, if they even show up at the event, will be in high demand. Actively recruit them to your team. You’re looking for a sexy prototype, not a final polished product.

Show, don’t tell

In your presentation, give the audience something tangible. Avoid slides at all costs. Don’t talk about what isn’t there, people are smart enough to fill in the gaps. Focus on the problem being solved. Do not talk about the technology behind it unless that is somehow relevant to the problem being solved. Show examples of real people using it. Have someone work on the pitch exclusively from the beginning.

Build something awesome

#1 to #3 don’t matter if your project is boring. You won’t be able to get people to join you and the presentation will stink. You can only put so much lipstick on a pig.

We hope that helped! Kudos to John for those. For our Bandung hackathon this weekend, you may want to check the list of API/challenges available here. Be creative, keep things simple, and solve a problem – because that’s what our judges are going to be looking for!

[Source: John Sheehan on Quora]

• Judges: We have a great group of judges here: Andy Zain (the director of the Jakarta Founders Institute), who has been in the mobile industry for a god amount of time here in Indonesia; Hera Laxmi Devi (senior manager of portal and digital assets at PT XL Axiata, Tbk) will judge based on the content and what a telco would think of an idea; and Toshihiko Suyama (market development director DeNA Asia) will be a great help to us when great games are made here!
• FAQs: We have added answers to some of the questions many of you have been asking. I would recommend you check it out first, and if you have any more questions you can always e-mail us and we will respond within 24 hours.
• Challenges: Since our API partners announcement, we have added six new challenges with interesting prizes, namely: KotaGames (3 Macbook Airs), XL (a Samsung Galaxy S3 and further support), SoftLayer (an iPad, iPod Touch, and $36,000 worth of credits), Cacoo (a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 and IDR 10,000,000, or $1028), DeNA (a new iPad), Vserv (will double your revenue after wrapping your app with its API for one month), Teamie (a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1), GEPI (a Google/Asus Nexus 7), and Lazada Indonesia (a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 and an internship opportunity). For details on how to win, please go to the Challenges/Prizes page.

Along the way while preparing the hackathon, we announced our first ever roadtrip through six cities. That was a great experience for us to meet and chat with communities outside the capital city. We are six days away from our first ever Startup Asia in Bandung and we have butterflies in our stomach. How about you? See you soon!

We announced our upcoming Startup Asia Bandung: the Multi-Platform Hackathon three weeks ago. We have been getting a great response from developers and startup companies who are interested in the event. Hoping to disrupt and expose the talent in Bandung specifically, and Indonesia in general, the event has so far attracted more than 250 participants. You can find the list of participants here.

With this post we also would like to introduce our media and community, and API partners, who have agreed to help us put the spotlight on developers here in Indonesia.

Our API partners (more to come!):

• Tiket: offering a IDR 6,000,000 cash reward and Tiket.com points valued at IDR 4,000,000 for the best use of its Tiket.com flight/hotel/train/concert/movie API. Commission is available for each sale made via the Tiket. com API. Post-event challenge: Tiket.com is offering a grand prize for the app that uses the Tiket.com flight/hotel/train/concert/movie API and has the best sales one month after the hackathon.
• SixReps: will award IDR 5,000,000 cash and help promote for six months the best hack that’s using its API.
• Sent.ly: will give away a Google Nexus phone and three months worth of Sent.ly credits for the best hack built using its API. Post-event challenge: Sent.ly will give three months’ worth of Sent.ly credits to apps that use Sent.ly APIs and are successfully launched within two weeks of the hackathon

Our media partners (we are still welcoming more media partners):

• Aplikanologi
• GameSaku
• Gopego
• iCreate
• Kaskus
• MakeMac
• MalesBanget
• SGEntrepreneurs
• Sidomi
• StartupBisnis
• TeknoUp
• ThumbsUp
• WebGeek

Our community partners:

• Bancakan
• FOWAB
• GameLAN
• StartupLokal
• SuWec
• Stasion

More challenges are coming from our gold and platinum sponsors (to be announced) too, so stay tuned! At the same time, everyone at Tech in Asia and the Startup Asia conferences would like to wish you all a happy Eid, and an enjoyable holiday to our Indonesian readers!

Since the Jakarta event, we have had many readers emailing us to find out where and when the next Startup Asia will be held. We’re happy to announce that the next Startup Asia event will be held in Bandung, a lovely city in Indonesia filled with universities, designers, and developers. It is also nicknamed the “Paris of Java”.

Startup Asia Bandung 2012 will be different from the previous two events we organized. It will be primarily focused on a 24-hour Hackathon. We’re making it multi-platform and non-restrictive. Developers can code in any language and for any platform.

Things to expect:

• 24 hours of fun – Similar to our hackathon in Jakarta, but even more fun! You can expect a lot of activities while the hacking gets tough at night.
• Challenges – We have some challenges to throw at the developers. Put your skills to work and live up to the challenge.
• Prizes – Each challenge comes with a prize, like some bonus cash, gadgets, and/or a possible internship at a tech company.
• APIs – There will be a list of APIs to have fun with. If you have APIs to provide, contact me at willis[at]techinasia[dot]com.
• People – Meet like-minded developers and test out your skills with them.

More details:

• Date: October 13 – 14 (Sat and Sun)

• Venue: Landmark Convention Hall
  JL. Braga 121, Braga, Sumur Bandung, Bandung, 40111, Indonesia [Google Map link]

• Price: Free – Sign up here.

• For sponsors: Contact Minghao at minghao[at]techinasia[dot]com

The full list of API, challenges, and prizes will be announced soon. So keep checking back!

We are looking for developers and designers across Indonesia to take part in this Hackathon. You can formulate and plan your idea beforehand, but no code should be written before the Hackathon starts. Our rules and FAQs can be found here.

You can also form your dream team first before going into the hackathon, or you can group up with some new friends and form a team once you’re there. For anything else, please check out our Startup Asia Bandung event site and stay tuned for more exciting updates.

Self-confessed hackathon addict, Zac Bowling took part in 80 over hackathons and won quite a few of them (he lost the one which he is featured in the video below though). So obviously he has some tips to share. Here are just a couple:

1. Hacks that are viable to become a product (Useful apps)

2. Good design will capture the judges’ attention

3. A flashy demo!

Should someone sleep during a hackathon? Zac says it depends. He would usually check out what others have built and if he felt that he was ahead of the rest, he would take rest.

There’s nothing really to prepare for a hackathon. Perhaps, the only thing is to look through what APIs and challenges are offered to better plan what you want to build (our list coming soon!). It is also important to come in with a fresh, creative, and open mind. Make friends, compete, and have fun!

[Image credit: Pauloricca.com]