Mashery Developer Blog

The @MasheryDev team can’t wait to bring more dev <3 your way as a part of the @Intel family! 

Excerpt from @Michels‘ post on the @Mashery blog:

“While you might think of Intel as ‘the chip company,’ if the company’s software group was an independent company, it would be among the world’s top five software companies. It’s incredible to me that Mashery has the opportunity to be a key component of Intel’s plans to grow and innovate across all the technology that we use throughout our day – from the Internet of Things, to the apps on our phones, tablets, laptops, TVs and other devices. We’re now part of one of the world’s biggest technology innovators, and Mashery will be able to use Intel’s vast array of resources to move faster to meet our customers’ needs. 

As exciting as this vision of the future is, it does not signal any change in our commitment to remaining the best enterprise API management platform in the world. Quite the contrary – Chris and Hank have committed to additional investment in our existing roadmap so we can innovate even faster. They realize that the enterprises we serve in segments like e-commerce, healthcare, media, travel, data services, and financial services are building the web services that will be combined with Intel’s APIs to create so many new and compelling user experiences.”

@Michels and @pnoshawn get their celebration on! Photo credit: Devon Biondi

We partnered with AT&T last week for the AT&T Aspire Mobile App Hackathon held at the Applico offices in New York. Aspire Mobile hackathon is is an event produced by the AT&T Developer Program that brings developers & designers together to help them build web/mobile apps.

Accompanying Mashery was OpenClove - a cloud based video platform that allows live video sharing, chat, social interaction and collaboration across a plethora of devices and applications.

Shubh from OpenClove talks about the OpenClove API

One thing I really liked about this event was the new breed of developers that it attracted. Given the rate of hackathons in NYC, you tend to see several repeat developers at each event. But not this time. This hackathon proved to be a great opportunity to reach out to new developers and help them build something awesome in just over 24 hours.

Some really good quality hacks were produced, many of which used Mashery APIs.

Some really cool apps built

• Kazoku - a mobile app that allows parents to assign tasks to their kids, such as homework, and then helps track progress. It then gamifies the experience by allowing kids to earn points for the tasks completed. The parents also have an option to have video conversations with their children, should they need any assistance, using OpenClove’s Video SDK.

  

  It touched the judges as well and they walked away with being adjudged Second Prize winners along with Best app built using OpenClove API Prize.

  

  Congratulations Team Kazoku - Winners of best app built using @OpenClove and Runners up at #atthack

• Oh my math - a clever web based game that teaches children math concepts such as ranges and averages in a unique fun way — by letting them answer sports data related questions. The sports data was provided using ESPN’s Stats API.

  

  I really loved this app for it’s simplicity and the age old problem it attempts to solve - how to make learning fun. Beautifully done. It ended up winning the “Best App Built using Mashery API Network” prize - a subscription to lynda.com for each of it’s members. Pretty educational eh!

  

  Team Oh, my math

  

  Congratulations Team Oh, my Math on winning the “Best App built using Mashery API Network” Prize #atthack

• GuruKool - an Android app that allows students and teachers to collaborate via multi-party video using OpenClove’s Android Video SDK. They were the Grand Prize winners for the entire event, and also the runners-up for the OpenClove prize.
  

  

  Team GuruKool

  

  Congratulations Team GuruKool: Grand prize winners and @OpenClove runners up at #atthack

A huge thank you to Alex Donn and Ben at AT&T, as well as to the folks at Applico for opening up their offices and being such gracious hosts to an amazing developer community that is NYC.

With Mashery offices in San Francisco, New York and Boston, it’s easy for us to find tech meetups and hackathons on any given day. However, we also enjoy getting on the ground in burgeoning developer markets, where we know developers exist in pockets and silos, but aren’t regularly mixing it up across verticals. Just last weekend, I set off for Atlanta to attend CoderFaire, a two-day developer event packed with learning and coding. This was the second installment of CoderFaire, with the first taking place in Nashville in fall of 2012.

Keynote and Sessions
On Saturday (4/20), CoderFaire kicked off with a keynote talk by Ben Ramsey (@ramsey) titled “Developing Intuition: How to Think Like a Software Architect.” He walked us through his career as a developer, and how it has lead him into software architecture. The gist I got from Ben’s talk was the importance on slowing down your brain, taking time to know where you are in a project, and to validate that what you’re working on is relevant to the problem.

The rest of the day was chock full of content spread across three tracks. Talks ranged from API design best practices, mobile development, application security to data modeling. The topics were incredibly diverse and expertise ran deep. Mix those in with southern hospitality and warm geeky humor, and the outcome was a learning experience that rivaled many large-scale events in bigger markets. CoderFaire felt like a well-organized mega-Meetup — personable, intimate and surrounded by others who are excited to learn new things.

I caught Fred Alger’s (@_phred) talk on app security, titled “Web Security: the OWASP top 10 and you!” Fred covered the OWASP “Top 10” which I think we all need to spend more time digging into. Some of the exploits that he covered included: XSS, CSRF, broken sessions, bad crypto, SQL injections, etc.

I also sat in on Keith Casey’s (@caseysoftware) talk on REST titled, “REST BEST Practices.” There are plenty of decks and videos of Keith giving his talk that you can find on Google. Keith works at Twilio, and he often refers to their API design in his examples. He covered best practices to regards to: versioning, verbs and the expected/unexpected actions/responses, discovery/HATEOAS/Hypermedia, etc. There was a lot of great information for both API providers and developers.

The Hackathon
The next day (4/21) was dedicated to the hackathon. Keith Casey (@caseysoftware), developer evangelist at Twilio (@Twilio), was the emcee. After brief sponsor introductions and platform/service demos, the developers set off to brainstorm, collaborate and start hacking on their various hacks.

The teams has about 8 hours to build their apps from scratch. At the end of the day, we had a handful of interesting hacks and demos. Here’s a few notable hacks that caught my fancy:

“Pandora to Rdio” by Jonathan Hill (@compwright) — imports your Pandora stations into your Rdio account. Jonathan explained that has been using Pandora for years, and that his channels and likes are a reflection of his true music listening taste. However, he enjoys the on-demand capabilities that Rdio provides. His hack scrapes (wince) his Pandora data and dynamically creates playlists on Rdio using their API (cheer). Jonathan was awarded an Apple TV for best use of a Mashery Network API.

“Medicine Reminder” by David Deriso (@davidderiso) and Isaiah Banks keeps you on track for taking your prescription medications. David’s inspiration came from personal experiences, dealing with the challenges of his parents’ complex prescription medication schedules. His team used the GoodRx API that’s provided through the Aetna CarePass platform to obtain pertinent drug information, including images of the meds. This team also won the Mashery prize for best use of a Mashery Network API, taking home a set of Apple TVs. (couldn’t choose, so they both won). In fact, this team won the best in show prize as selected by the organizers, giving them all their choice of a JetBrains product license (of their choice).

“Truth or Dare Cube” was a game hacked in pure HTML/CSS3. The inspiration? Wanting to learn how to build animations with just CSS3 transforms, and coaxing the crowd into awkward confessions. If you haven’t looked at CSS3 Transforms, you’ll be pleasantly surprised with how smooth you can animate elements with very little code.

Until next time, Atlanta
CoderFaire successfully brought together Atlanta’s diverse tech communities, including entrepreneur hackers, enterprise architects and seasoned business folks. Cross pollination like this is exactly what needs to happen for Atlanta to become a magnet city for future tech talent and opportunities. We’re looking forward to putting our feet on the ground at more Atlanta tech events.

Props to the organizers, EICC — Cal Evans, Kathy Evans, Jacques Woodcock, Chris Spruck and Kevin Roberts. Also, thanks to the sponsors — MailChimp, Github, Basho, JetBrains, 10gen, New Relic, Mediacurrent, WilderMinds, MySQL, Develop with Purpose, Thompson Technologies and Beaufort Fairmont. See you at the next CoderFaire in Nashville! (dates TBD)

Carol Burnett once said, “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” But when you’re short on time, you make the most of what you have — and if what you have is a room full of comedians, developers, and developers that think they’re comedians, you get heaps of comedy in short order. This last weekend at Twitter’s HQ in San Francisco, Mashery partook in Comedy Hack Day, the brainchild of Cultivated Wit, a creative firm with founders who all previously worked together at The Onion.

This hackathon wasn’t about solving serious pressing issues nor competing for gargantuan prizes (though there were some good ones). The mission was to build something that was fun and entertaining, while having a blast in the process. If you’re skeptical about spending a weekend building silly software, you’re not alone. So was I. However, the very premise of having a developer event focused on comedy was infectious from start to finish. It was hilarious and lighthearted, which sparked comedic camaraderie that resulted in amazing creativity.

The Hackathon Venue - Twitter HQ
Twitter is located just down the street from Mashery. They were kind of enough to lend their space to us for the weekend (even staying open overnight), and I’d be hard pressed to find a better venue in San Francisco for any type of developer event. The primary hacking space was the cafeteria, which was expansive and included four large projector screens (perfect for demos). The walk-out roof-top patio (size just short of a football field) lent great views of the city, and was a nice way to get fresh air without leaving the building.

The event kicked off on Saturday morning (April 7), and ran overnight through Sunday.

Making Fun from Code and APIs
At the start of the event, all of the platform API sponsors were welcomed up on stage to introduce their technology, intending to inspire developers as they came up with app ideas. At first I struggled with deciding which Mashery Network APIs were relevant to comedy — and it dawned on me that both social media and traditional media would fit quite well. Shortly after the API demos were given by the platform sponsors, the emcee, Baratunde Thurston (@baratunde) invited everyone to line up and pitch their application ideas. Nearly half of the entire crowd stood and lined up. And that was when the comedy officially kicked off.

Stand Up Comedy, In the Form of Hack Pitches
At a hackathon, it’s typical to get 10 or 15 brave souls up on stage to share their ideas. At Comedy Hack Day, about 30 lined up.. and nearly every person presented multiple ideas. A few comedians turned the idea pitching session into improv. Ideas covered the entire spectrum, from hilarious, offensive, absurd, to incredibly awesome. Over 70 ideas were presented, and all of them (as well as some late entries) can be found here. You can also watch some of the idea pitches on YouTube.

Even the Judges Were Funny
The deadline for development was 12:30 PM on Sunday (April 8). The teams were fed, and given a couple of hours to shape and massage their demos that they’d be giving in front of a packed house and judging panel. The panel was loaded with personalities who not only gave their time, but also their full attention and sense of humor.

• DJ Patil (@dpatil) - Chief Data Scientist at Greylock
• W Kamau Bell (@wkamaubell) - Bay Area comedian, has a show on FX called Totally Biased
• Shanti Charan (@ShantiCharan)- Named “Stand-Up on the Way Up” by SF Weekly 
• Mike Winter - Builds robots at Robot 11
• Shannon Spanhake (@shannonspanhake) - Deputy Information Officer for the Mayor’s Office (San Francisco)

The Notable, Hilarious Hacks
I dare say that every single app pitched on stage was at least entertaining, of which there were 17. Here a few that stood out:

• Up In A Gif by Ricky Robinett (@rickyrobinett) - I first met Ricky last year at a hackathon in New York (where he’s from). He’s an engineer and API lead at Ordr.in. He’s one of many folks who flew in just for Comedy Hack Day SF. His app is a twist on the alarm clock. First, the snooze button is dynamically placed on your screen sot hat you cannot use muscle memory to grab your phone and blindly hit snooze. Second, when you hit snooze, the camera will take a series of pictures, create an animated GIF from the sequence of photos, and upload them to Twitter. An app that acts as a snooze deterrent, using public shaming and humor as the lever. Ricky used the Rdio API to incorporate music into the alarm clock. Video rough cut of his demo here.

• Zombie Roulette by Angel Inokon (@angelinokon) - Angel is not a developer. She is a product manager and designer that has a vision of building an app to break the world record for the largest coordinated Thriller (Michael Jackson) dance, ever. She’s aiming for 1,000,000 worldwide to do the dance on Oct 31, 2013, and she is building the app to pull this off. Zombie Roulette helps individuals learn the dance moves, share practice/progress videos with others, organize meetups, and coordinate the masses to pull off this big challenge. Angel is planning to incorporate fund raising for good cause into the program as well. She scored big points with the hackathon judge that works in SF city hall, and managed to win the “Least Viable Product” award (comprised of a GitHub membership, some MailChimp credits, and a Leo Leporte signed bottle of very fancy single malt whisky). Angel used the Viddy API  to build her prototype app.Video rough cut of her demo here.

• Magic Story Factory by Brian Fountain (@fountain) and Toby Muresianu (@tobymuresianu) - What a team these guys made. Brian is a comedy writer and iOS developer. Toby is a comedy writer and developer. They were destined to build something awesome, and they delivered. They built a native iOS iPad app that allows parents to read the stories they want to read (e.g. headline news, sports news, etc.) by mashing up the news content into a storybook template, complete with children’s’ illustrations and animations). Their app was selected by Mashery for the Most Ridiculous Use of a Mashery API. Speaking of which, they used two — USA TODAY API for headline news, and ESPN API for sports news. Video rough cut of their demo here.

• Citation Needed by the Stanford Flipside crew, including Zach Galant, Jeremy Keeshin, Conor Doherty, Akiko Kozato, Matt LaVan, Rahul Prabala, Lcas Hanson, Anush Skukla and Courbin Foucart. In retrospect, this was a small army of developers that should have shipped nothing less than a polished revenue generating business ready to launch. They did win the grand prize  — MailChimp “Super Awesome Way-Better-Than-Everybody-Else” award. Their app allows you to create very credible looking doctored Wikipedia entires. So, for instance, if you wanted to insert a false fact such as “Barack Obama was born in Canada on February 29, 1960” you would launch their app, select Barack Obama as the WIkipedia subject, type in your made-up fact, and the app would render Wikipedia on your movie device incorporating your new fact. The app is perfect for winning arguments without ever having to be right. They incorporated the Wikipedia and Twilio APIs. Watch their demo here (produced in HD).
  
  
  

Team: Citation Needed

Yours truly and Angel Inokon, creator of Zombie Roulette:

It’s a Wrap
This event epitomized synergy — mashing up hackathons and humor, that delivered a whole far greater than the sum of the parts. Our team had a fantastic time at this event. We would like to thank the organizers, Cultivated Wit (@cultivatedwit) - Baratunde Thurston (@baratunde), Brian Janosch (@bjanosch) and Craig Cannon (@craigrcannon). Also thank you to our fellow sponsors: MailChimp, Funny or Die, SoundCloud, 10gen, Tapestry, tokbox, Rdio, GitHub, Twilio, Stride (gum) and Bowens.

And the bartender responded, “Success, but you’re not ready!”
<rimshot />
So a JavaScript function walks into a bar.

This past weekend, the Undergraduate Student Alliance of Computer Scientists (USACS) at Rutgers hosted its bi-annual hackathon HackRU at the Cook Campus Center at the Rutgers University. HackRU is a 24-hour student hackathon that brings together new coders, and top college talent to produce awesome apps. The event is open to anyone willing to spend the weekend hacking for honor, glory and some cool prizes, including the coveted Mashery red BIG JAMBOX!

Over 250 students hacked all night to build over 40 hacks in just under 24 hours.

This included the usual suspects of web apps/mobile apps in addition to what I suspect would be a core part of future hackathons - increasing number of hardware hacks.

Hardware hacking galore at HackRU - from the Makerbots to the Watering tractor to the glowing yoyo - HackRU had it all.

Best Mashery Hack

Let’s Plan Gen - Best app built using Mashery API Network - allows you to plan your day by pulling data like fitness activities happening around a given location via Active.com’s search API and list of all movies currently playing in local theaters, with showtimes using Tribune Media Services’ Data Delivery APIs.

More Mashery powered hacks

1. Hangout - An Android app that checks the movies that are currently playing in Theaters using Rotten Tomatoes API, places to eat and fun activities using Yelp API.

   

2. mp3 Meta Fixer - A very handy hack that pulls songs via the Rdio API and analyses songs to find their meta data and add that meta data.
3. Drop Screamer - An Android app that screams and flashes when the phone is dropped and then pulls up some choices on the new phone you can buy using BestBuy’s product catalog API :)

Code. Play. Fun.

It wasn’t all code though. As is the norm, hackers always find ways to entertain themselves/keep energized.

Mashery powered Bubble Tea recharged the developers in the middle of the night.

Boy, does Rutgers love the Bubble Tea :)

And of course the awesome Mashery swag is always a hit!

The following is a guest blog post from Sidney Maestre, a Platform Evangelist for StackMob, a leading provider of backend services for mobile developers. He has spent the last few years building mobile apps and sharing his knowledge with others. These efforts included speaking at Adobe MAX, 360iDev, SenchaCon, HTML5DevConf, Silicon Valley Code Camp, creating two courses, jQuery Mobile for Beginners and Learn Backbone.js + StackMob, for the uDemy.com platform and organizing the Bay Area Mobile meetup. Follow him on Twitter and Github at @SidneyAllen

Active.com, a Mashery API, provides an open data platform to help people gain access to activities anywhere. Active.com’s API allows you to search for activities like triathlons, marathons and 5Ks as well as campground availability and golf tee times. Neil Mansilla, Platforms Evangelist at Mashery, created the Active.com demo app to show off their search API. Users simply enter a zip code and perform a search against the Active.com API. Results are displayed on a map.

Building on the Active.com demo, in this tutorial we’re going to allow the user to save their favorite activities. But how to do this without spinning up servers and writing a lot of code? That’s where MBaaS (mobile back-end as a service) comes in.

What Is MBaaS

Most developers are familiar with PaaS (Platform as a Service) offered by companies like Heroku and AWS (Amazon Web Services). Instead of managing your own servers, you deploy your server code on their cloud infrastructure. MBaaS (mobile backend as a service), specializes in providing an API and SDKs for mobile developers to easily add backend services like data storage, social integration and push notifications without writing a lot of server-side code. StackMob is a leading MBaaS provider and a good fit for the new “favorites” feature.

StackMob Features Added to the Active.com App

We’ve added user management and authentication, data storage and access control levels, Users can click on an activity to see details. From the activity details screen you click “add to favorites” to save it. In order to associate favorites with a specific user, we’ve added a signup/login form. Users must be logged in to favorite an activity. Once logged in they can select the favorites tab to view all of their saved favorites. At any point, the user can logout of the app.

Creating a New App on StackMob

If you haven’t already, take a minute to sign up for StackMob.

From the StackMob dashboard, click create new app. You’ll give your application a name and select which platform you’d like instructions on how to get started. The getting started page shows you how to download and configure the StackMob SDK. You can skip this step if you are working with the Active.com demo.

For the Active.com demo code all you need is the StackMob public API key which you’ll find under application information & keys and the Active.com API key. Open up the Active.com demo code and copy and paste your API keys inside the Constants.h file.

Storing Favorites on StackMob

Clicking on the disclosure arrow on the map will display the activity detail screen. Click the add to favorites button to save the activity to StackMob.

StackMob’s iOS SDK uses Core Data to save and fetch data from StackMob. We’ve added the necessary frameworks and initialized StackMob in our AppDelegate. We’ve also created a User and a Favorite entity in our core data model.

Saving a favorite is done by creating a newManagedObject, setting the title and invoking the saveOnSuccess method which performs an asynchronous call to StackMob with a success and failure callback.

User Identity Management

You’ll notice if you try to save a favorite prior to logging in, you’ll be redirected to the signup/login screen. From there you can create a new user profile or login with an existing one. You’ll also notice that once you login the navigation bar will update with a logout button, so you can logout from any screen.

After you login, make sure you favorite at least one activity. The first time you save an object to StackMob, your schema will be auto generated for your app and populated with your object.

To confirm your data was saved, go to the StackMob data browser select the favorite schema and perform a query. You should see your favorite.

Adding Access Controls to Data

Now, that users are required to login, every favorite will have an “owner”. Let’s set the favorite schema permissions so a user must be logged in to create a new favorite and only the owner of the object can read, update or delete it.

Fetching Data from StackMob

If you return to the active.com demo app in the iOS simulator, you can retrieve your favorites by selecting the favorites tab. Any time you add another favorite, click the refresh button in the navigation bar to fetch the latest data from StackMob.

That concludes this tutorial, be sure to checkout the other services available through the StackMob Marketplace, and get ready for further integrations with Mashery’s 50+ public APIs. 

Over a dozen leading TV technologies looking for what’s next from developers are gathering in Boston April 27-28 for the TVnext Hack (#TVnextHack), part of Hill Holliday’s 3rd annual TVnext Summit.

ESPN headlines an impressive roster of platinum sponsors, including companion app platforms Watchwith, Viggle and Echonest. The ESPN team will be offering technology from its open developer center, looking for developers to innovate with their sports data APIs, specifically to build second screen experiences for sports fans.

Winners in each of 5 categories will demo their app in front of the TVnext Summit’s audience, who will vote via Twitter for ‘Best In Show.’ This will give developers an incredible spotlight in front of thousands of people (both in-person and tuning in online).

In addition to a wide range of prizes including iPads, tablets, Jamboxes, other premiums and prize money, developers of winning apps will be well promoted by the sponsors through social channels, blogs and showcased on their API sites.

Developers can learn more about the event and register for the hack at http://tvnexthack.com. The event will begin on Saturday morning, where APIs will be presented and teams will be formed. Developers, designers and innovators in the space will enjoy refreshments and one-on-one support and networking with some of the industry’s most visible companies. Coding continues into Sunday afternoon, where apps will be presented in front of a tech-celebrity and VIP judging panel.

Media services company TMS is coming to Boston, making their TV, movie and celebrity data available to help developers innovate entertainment apps. TV channel content providers, such as Univision, will provide actual video and show content through their API.

Boston-based RAMP will be offering APIs from its MediaCloud platform that enables developers to build synchronized companion apps in the emerging second screen space.

Developers will have access to APIs from popular services like Gracenote, Tokbox and apps like GetGlue. Popular social API Klout will also be attending the TVnext Hack, bringing their powerful platform that can help identify influencers in conversations on Twitter, Google + and Facebook. The Klout API will also provide access to analytics that can be used to measure ad effectiveness for TV.

WIth a month to go, space is getting limited and developers are encouraged to register now at http://tvnexthack.eventbrite.com/. For more information, visit http://tvnexthack.com.

At Mashery, we attend and/or organize an average of about 2-3 hackathons a month. At that pace, it means we witness a lot of developer awesomeness. Even so, every now and then, you come across something that takes your breath away. London Web Summit Hackday was one such event.

10 year old Hemish Gholkar was the star of the hackday. He ended up winning the Best Designed App award for his really cool car game. You can read more about Himesh and how he impressed all and sundry at LWS Hackday in this very touching post by our very own - Roque Versace.

What is London Web Summit Hackday?

Held a day after the London Web Summit earlier this month at Modern Jago - Microsoft’s trendy co-working space in Shoreditch. LWS Hackday brought developers together for an all-day coding fest focused on building apps and mashups with APIs.

It provided an opportunity for developers of all experience levels to share ideas, collaborate on existing projects, start new ventures, and find out about great tools and new APIs to play with.

This was our second hackathon in London that we helped organize, with help from our API friends at SendGrid, Twilio & Pusher and participated in after the very successful API Hackday last August.

• About 70 attendees.
• 13 Hacks
• 6 API Providers - Twilio, SendGrid, Pusher, Paymill, PeerIndex
• Doors opened at 8. Closed at 8. 12 hours of awesomeness.
• 10 Prizes worth over £4000
• 120 Cups of Coffee
• 80 Bagels
• 90 Pret-A-Manger Sandwiches
• 100 Beer bottles

The Hacks

Here are some hacks that stood out -

• Sonify Everything - uses influencer data from the PeerIndex API and make it into a sound on anyone’s computer using Pusher.
• Take your meds - uses Twilio to remind you to take meds.
• NewsFixed.com - uses the PeerIndex API to power the profile pages of journalists and also finds their influence areas.
• Twisty uses the PeerIndex API to find your interests & then allows you to organize Twitter friends into interest specific Twitter lists.

Best Mashery Hack

GiveNow.tk really swept away the awards at LWS Hackday. Grand Prize + Best app built using Mashery API Network + Best app built using the PeerIndex API!

GiveNow.tk allows you to easily create viral donation campaigns. It lets people donate money to a charity of their choice and then encourages them to tweet with the twitter handles of people who they most influence already pre-populated using the PeerIndex API, thereby increasing the chances of the charity campaign going viral.

Winners

• Grand Prize - GiveNow.tk
• Runners up - Sonify & Take your meds
• Best Designed App- 10 year old Himesh for his very cool car racing game.

  

• Audience Choice- Barefoot

  

  Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio was in town and stopped by to hang out with the hackers at LWS Hackday.

• Most Business Potential - Newsfixed

It wasn’t all code of course. Devs found time to “Gangnam style” :)

More coverage of LWS Hackday - Pusher, PeerIndex. Very cool video coverage of the event from the folks at Microsoft.

Last week, the biggest little Developer Outreach team on seven continents (@delynator, @amit, @mansillaDEV and @SarahJaneMorris) boarded a (few) plane(s) and travelled to Austin to keep it weird at SXSWi. 

We were there to talk APIs and meet and greet developers at Mashery’s awesome Circus Mashimus lounge. We were also excited to join forces with Twilio to host Developer Trivia and watch our own Neil Mansilla take part in a deep-dive workshop on Developer Experience.

A trip to SX wouldn’t be complete without a party or 6, and the DevO team was pumped to be able to attend parties hosted by several of our API friends, including Twilio, SendGrid and Klout. Our own lounge was something of a party in itself, and presented many awesome opportunities to get snaps in our official #CMLounge photobooth with some of our favorite developers. Here’s a shot featuring (L to R) myself, the inimitable Jimmy Jacobson, of Wedgies and #VegasTech, Twilio East Coast Devangelist and Mashery friend Jon Gottfried, and of course, the one and only @amit. 

Look! It’s Sanjay, our Head of Developer Products and Neil, our SF-based Platforms Evangelist superstar feeling the love at the Mashery Party at Bess Bistro. 

Here’s our own VP of Marketing/ Circus Mashimus lounge ringmaster, Julie, Pete Erickson of MoDev (one of the many cool event series the MasheryDev team regularly participates in), and our fearlessly awesome DevO leader, Delyn! 

Our Developer Trivia event on Monday afternoon co-hosted by Twilio brought together 9 developer teams testing their trivia chops for prizes like Arduino kits, Jamboxes, Bodymedia devices, ESPN messenger bags and more. Here’s our winning team, featuring developers from @tokbox, @aviary and @braintree, with their @mashery and @twilio hosts. And hey! It was the delightful @songz’s birthday (he’s peacing out in front) that day too! Double win. 

There’s nothing quite like talking shop and sharing laughs with fellow tech and API enthusiasts and friends. While we’re physically exhausted, we’re left energized and inspired to keep on letting the world know about Mashery’s awesome APIs and our love for the developers that build on them. Can’t wait to see you at our next event, and at SXSWi 2014!