Moving On Up at the Seattle DevExchange Hackathon
The Debut of Our First Experimental API- Money Movement
For our first hackathon of 2018, we visited Seattle, the Pacific Northwest’s reigning (raining?) tech hub, and the brand new South Lake Union Capital One Café. Seattle being Seattle, it rained during our stay, we drank far too much coffee, and our partners at AngelHack wore plaid for our Friday night kickoff session.
How did the event go? Here are some highlights:
We Previewed a New Experimental API
As part of our platform strategy for 2018, the DevExchange is debuting a new category of API products known as Experimental APIs. These APIs use mock services and simulated data to mimic API functions. Designed with the goal of getting early feedback on API desirability, functionality, and design, we decided to use the Seattle hackathon to debut our first Experimental API offering — Money Movement.
“These Experimental APIs are intended to be nimble and iterative in nature, allowing us to co-create with our developer community. Experimental APIs can be built in response to a LOB that wants feedback on a concept prior to investing in the full API build, or to test feedback from external developers.” Jeff Hansen — Product Marketing, Capital One DevExchange
The Money Movement API simulates the ability to transfer money between Capital One accounts, and between Capital One accounts and those held at other financial institutions. In the current iteration, the Experimental API can retrieve a list of eligible accounts, request transfers, retrieve transfer information, and update transfer requests.
On hand in Seattle were the Money Movement Product Manager Dan Kovach and Tech Lead Pradeep Elluru — who presented on its current capability set, answered questions on usage and integration, and conducted empathy interviews to help guide future development.
Of the ten teams competing in Seattle, eight used the new API, including the winners. We received feedback on the current capabilities, on the potential for future P2P or bill pay features, and discovered some small areas in the tech and documentation to tweak.
“We want this API to be holistic when we productionize it. It isn’t there yet, but we’re using events like this to figure out what that holistic money movement universe would look like to developers.” Dan Kovach, Product Manager, Money Movement
Want to contribute feedback on Money Movement? Join the conversation on Gitter.
We Introduced Teams to Cortana
For 2018, we worked with the Microsoft Cortana team to introduce our participants to their virtual voice assistant device. This included an introductory training session and hands-on instruction and troubleshooting from Dorrene Brown, Project Manager Cortana Skills Kit.
The Swagless Movement Continues to Gain Momentum
Coming off a successful SXSW, we brought our Swagless campaign to Seattle, donating our swag budget to two worthy local non-profits — Technology Access Foundation (TAF) and Ada Developers Academy. Instead of receiving branded t-shirts and pens, our hackathon participants voted via Twitter poll on what proportion of our $2400 swag budget should go towards these non-profits. At the end of the day, the vote was 53% TAF and 47% ADA, with our budget being distributed accordingly.
“It feels amazing to be doing Swagless in 2018. Words cannot express how happy I am to see Swagless at events such as the Capital One House at SXSW. To me, it feel like we asked the question, ‘Can we change the world?’ or ‘Can we plant seeds instead of giving flowers?’ and we got an answer back of ‘Yes!’” — Kenya Fields, Marketing Coordinator, Capital One DevExchange
The Winning Teams
On to the good stuff! We had some top-notch participants with stellar ideas compete at our 2018 Seattle hackathon- here’s an introduction to some of our winners.
Runners Up
Team Wishing Well used jQuery, Bluetooth, Node.js, and HS110 Smart Plug; along with our Bank Account Starter and Money Movement APIs; to create an interactive, positively reinforcing experience that requires minimal effort to help save towards a goal. We loved their presentation and how engaging their IoT experience was onstage.
Winners
Team Banana Split used Swift and Xcode; along with our Money Movement API; on a mobile app to make splitting bills fun and easy.
“Our app was meant to solve problems when you’re trying to split a bill at dinner amongst friends and you’re like, ‘OMG how do you do that?’ We created an app where with just one click of a button, the bill is split between a number of people!” — Team Banana Split
https://twitter.com/CapitalOneDevEx/status/978359716517765120
Judges
We’d like to give a round of applause to our great judges.
- Dorrene Brown — Project Manager, Cortana Skills Kit
- Dan Kovach — Product Manager, Money Movement
- Dave Niederkrome — Co-Founder and CEO of Fincurate
- Michael Walker — Director of Software Engineering, Capital One
Thank you for coming to our event and lending your expertise to the judging process.
What’s Up Next!
- Hackathons — Catch us in Denver this June for our second hackathon of 2018. This will be our second visit to the Union Station LoDo Café and we’re excited to see what Denver has in store for us this year!
- APIs — We’ll continue to socialize Money Movement, collecting the feedback necessary to roadmap the future of this Experimental API. If you’d like to contribute feedback on Money Movement, please join the conversation on Gitter. Also, keep an eye on our portal for future Experimental API releases and announcements.
- #GoSWAGless — We’ll be continuing our SWAGless campaign at select conferences and hackathons throughout 2018.
Related Links
· 5 Things We Learned from Hosting Hackathons
· What Hosting Hackathons Taught Us About Our APIs
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT: These opinions are those of the author. Unless noted otherwise in this post, Capital One is not affiliated with, nor is it endorsed by, any of the companies mentioned. All trademarks and other intellectual property used or displayed are the ownership of their respective owners. This article is © 2018 Capital One.
