Alipay's hackathon endorses mini-app developers

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‍Once considered geeky, in today's world, developers are treasured, especially by the tech companies looking to hire the brightest developer minds.

A 36-hour hackathon, the Ant Technology Exploration Conference (ATEC) Developer Challenge kicked off at Alibaba’s Computing Conference Thursday morning in Hangzhou's Cloud Town, east China’s Zhejiang Province.

Developers at the competition are holding signs reading "To change the world" and "Geek is the new sexy." /Ant Financial

Organized by Alibaba’s related company Ant Financial, the competition started roughly at 10 a.m. local time and will wrap up Friday afternoon.

Over 1,000 “hackers” from more than 200 companies across China, mostly start-ups and small businesses, registered for the competition. Most of the companies build online services and solutions.

Ant Financial

The competition hopes to discover talent to support mini-programs on Alipay where Ant Financial originated.

"Alipay has always had mini-programs on its platform such as the utility payments app, although we never emphasized the service," Alipay's spokesperson told CGTN regarding the fact that its rival WeChat has a more famous mini-program platform in China.

"Now we have opened the platform to the developers, and they are given the chance to serve our users directly," he added.

The participants are asked to deliver a fully functional prototype running on Alipay's mini-program platform. The winners’ prototypes should be user-friendly, highly technical-merited, creative, easy to sell and market-valuable.

The winners will take away prizes valued as high as over 3.3 million yuan, roughly 500,000 US dollars, and chances to “exchange ideas” with Ant Financial, according to the company.

During the one-and-a-half-day competition, the developers are welcomed to grab a bite at the free fueling station that serves potato chips, candy bars, soda and canned Chinese herb tea.

Free live music, cheerleading and massages are also provided to get the development going.

A care package is provided to each participant at the competition. /Ant Financial

But the company is not the only one who endorses people who code.

While the hackathon was in full swing in the morning, a middle-aged woman sneaked in and posted a flyer on-site with information about her daughter, who is looking for a "programmer" to be her Mr. Right.

The mother said both she and her daughter consider programmers as the best fit for marriage and family as they are “down-to-earth and reliable.”

The security guards later persuaded the woman to remove the ad.

Alipay called this incident a “strategic deployment” on its official Weibo account, saying “Come on friends, don’t let the lady go home empty-handed.”

Alipay comments on the incident at the event today on its official Weibo account, saying "Don’t let the lady go home empty-handed."

Another hackathon organized by Ant Financial is going on simultaneously in Silicon Valley, in the US state of California. Winners will take home prizes valued over 50,000 US dollars.

CGTN also streamed live from Ant Technology Exploration Conference (ATEC) Developer Challenge 2017, click here to watch the rebroadcast.

(CGTN's Gong Zhe also contributed to the story.)

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