John Lunn, Senior Global Director, Developer Network, PayPal & Braintree

This weekend we hosted our first BattleHack in Sydney, Australia at the state-of-the-art Luxe Studios. Fueled by treats from local culinary icons like Bourke Street Bakery, Miss Chu’s and Gelato Messina, as well as local craft beer, alcoholic popsicles and a rooftop BBQ, some of Australia’s brightest developers created 16 hacks for good in just 24 hours.

My fellow judges - Joanne Jacobs, Shaun Greenblo and Jason Cartwright – and I were presented with some amazingly creative and innovative mobile apps, from geo-tagged crowdfunding platforms to QR code-enabled cards to help the homeless. The competition was fierce, but in the end, Team GearBox walked away with the coveted BattleHack axe.  

Created by Christopher Michaelides, Michael Barlow, Andrej Griniuk and Tom Frauenfelder, GearBox created a storage locker powered by an Arduino Yun that allows users to borrow fitness and sports equipment using a mobile app. It’s an Internet of Things (IoT) solution that allows access to storage for the sports item, uses a timer to calculate total rent and provides payments through PayPal.

Team Local Heroes built a geo-tagged crowdfunding platform that allows the community to prioritize their needs; allowing anyone to pledge funds towards local issues. Third place winners, Team Small Solutions created an app that allows users to buy magazines from various vendors by using BLE Beacons for cashless payments.

In November, Team GearBox will represent Australia at the BattleHack World Finals to compete for the $100,000 grand prize.

To find out more about BattleHack visit: https://2014.battlehack.org/