Isobar Create London (together with O2) is the UK’s first developer event or 'hackathon' that will challenge people to pioneer new and innovative uses of Near Field Communications (NFC) technology.  

Near Field Communication (NFC) technology will let us make transactions, exchange digital content, and connect electronic devices like never before. Your phone will be your credit card, boarding pass, hotel room key, even coupons at the supermarket.

Create London is the first UK hackathon of its kind to explore the NFC chip in mobiles, as well as other potential applications. This is an open invitation to developers and designers to define the future of NFC and find greater uses for this exciting new technology.

When: Saturday March 24^th, through the night to Sunday March 25^th. Doors open 8am on Saturday for a 10am kick-off. Teams to finish and present ideas at 4pm on Sunday.

Where: Shoreditch Studios, Old Street, London MAP

Registration is now closed but we will be uploading all the great ideas next week so watch this space.

The brief: We’re looking for teams to pioneer new uses of NFC. We think NFC will have a massive impact on the retail industry, the leisure and entertainment industry, the finance industry, and sporting events. As such, we’re challenging particpants to harness NFC in any of the 5 following ways:

• Phone to phone: Transferring something meaningful from one phone to another using NFC.
• Phone to tag: Using tags where the phone (or a reader) can read data and react to it. Sometimes the data is a URL; other times it is just the ID of the device.
• Phone to reader: Having the phone act as a tag (or a card) and ‘speak’ to a computer with a tag reader attached to it.
• Tag to reader: Similar to phone to tag, only that a computer with a reader ‘responds’ to reading the tag.
• Phone to simulator: We will create ‘simulators’ of real-world machines we envision using NFC and how they can exchange data with smartphones. Examples include a petrol pump and a cash register. Participants will be able to create apps that ‘talk’ to these simulators.

NFC applications should be focused on improving interactions between brands and consumers. Each team is expected to build a technical proof of concept during the event. Each idea must have a technical implementation. Winners will be based on whether their app fundamentally changes the way businesses operate or the way consumers behave, or both. Also, all apps built remain 100% with the owners.

The prizes: In addition to being amongst the first people to get a hands on opportunity with the latest in NFC technology, we’re giving participants a chance to win loads of goodies including:

• Two kickstarter funds, courtesy of BlueVia and Proxama, to help the winning teams to bring their ideas to market. This includes marketing support and promotion at an NFC enabled bus shelter in a central London location – courtesy of Clear Channel.
• An all expenses paid trip to BlackBerry World Conference, Orlando
• A day at Google (London, NYC, Mountain View or Zurich) that includes a full tour, lunch and a meeting with Google’s mobile engineers
• 2 tickets to Chelsea in the Champions League
• Bottles of Smirnoff Vodka and Johnnie Walker Blue Label
• 6 box tickets for Westlife at the O2
• 6 box tickets for Radiohead at the O2
• 2 tickets to Guardian Activate London
• 2 Samsung Galaxy tablets 
• More to be announced soon!

The judges: When coding ends at 4pm on Sunday 25th, each team will have 3 minutes to present their work to the audience and our esteemed panel of judges, which so far includes:

• Stephen Bedggood, NFC Product Manager – O2
• Neil Garner, Chief Executive Officer - Proxama
• Sanyu Kiruluta, Team Lead Developer Relations - Blackberry
• Keith O’Brien, Head of Content - Samsung
• Andres-Leonardo Martinez-Ortiz, Developer Program Engineer - BlueVia
• Alastair Dant, Head of Interactive Technology - The Guardian
• John Ridpath - Contagious Magazine
• Niku Banaie, Chief Innovation Officer – Isobar
• Dom O’Brien, Head of Innovation – glue Isobar

Create London is the 3rd event of it’s kind, with Isobar having previously hosted successful events in Boston and San Francisco, both attracting a variety of sponsors including Google, Nokia, HTC, ReadWriteWeb, Where.com and tagstand.com amongst others.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us directly create.london@isobar.com