The WebVR community gets some long-waited relief on November 1st in the form of a global hackathon run completely online and for the longest period ever, 90 days. The platform, Virtuleap, is co-organized by the Amsterdam Chapter President of the VR/AR Association, Amir-Esmaeil Bozorgzadeh, and is devoted to championing the WebVR cause by providing the community with the resources it sorely needs at this stage in the industry.
Mozilla, Microsoft, and Google are some of the technology partners alongside ecosystem partners like VRBASE, VR First, Force Field VR, and of course the VR/AR Association. The lead media partner, Upload, yesterday published the initial announcement of the hackathon, which has already stirred the grassroots community to prepare for the upcoming WebVR extravaganza. Student groups at Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and the Entertainment & Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, are all officially participating in the hackathon.
StartupAmsterdam, the government arm that is tasked with developing and enriching the startup tech community in the Dutch capital, is sponsoring the event and, as such, the prizes both themed to the city and include flying out winning teams to Amsterdam in April 2017. The top prize is a slot in VRBASE's accelerator program, which happens to be the first of its kind in Europe, which runs for 6-months and includes a cash prize of €30,000 (euros). The second prize is a 3-month internship program with Force Field VR, the second biggest VR studio in Europe and formerly known as Vanguard Games.
For more info, email Amir here.
