I put a call out for sponsors and Coding Futures have stepped up to the plate and are now sponsoring LeedsHack!
They have a cracking wordpress membership plugin (and now invites)
But as you know by now, I like to let the company tell us what they do in there own words…
Good news everyone!, Our friends at Affiliate Window / buy.at have agreed to be our main sponsor of the event!
Both networks are amongst the most respected in the industry and together we are going to help you actually make some money from your hack at Leedshack 
It’s a really exciting partnership for me personally and I know that @affwin and @buyatuk will be sending a team to compete for our world famous poundshop prizes!
As with all sponsors, I’ll show you the official text of what they do rather than my personal ramblings
Hot on the heels of the sponsorship announcement, comes the Esendex challenge, now I’m not going to tell you the prize just yet (I’ve got 3 months to drag this thing out) but the best use of the Esendex API, developer accounts, documentation and probably the developers who wrote the system will all be provided so you know what you have to do… make something intresting.
Challenge
Best use of the Esendex API
Prize
Not telling yet…
I’m really pleased to announce Esendex as our first sponsor of LeedsHack 2, We’ve been playing with there API for our own projects recently so it’s great that they have chosen to support us with LeedsHack, I also hear they are fielding a team;
As with all sponsors, I’ll show you the official text of what they do rather than my personal ramblings Continue reading
I’ve just agreed to provisionally book the venue for the dates of the 6th/7th of August 2011, Tickets are now available (you can even donate to the event with your ticket if your feeling flush (we might even have an award for most original donation amount 
).
At the moment we have NO sponsors what so ever but when has that ever stopped us doing something silly, if you think your company or you know a company that might be interested, then please get in touch.
Other than that, sign up, tweet and let everyone know that LEEDS HACK IS BACK!
We’ve been planning the next Leeds Hack since about 4 hours into the first one, we have a couple of options available at the moment but its looking like we can have TWO leedshacks this year One in July/August and one in November with the Leeds digital festival.
Whilst we put the details together the best way for you to stay in touch is twitter or our awesome mailing list…
From 0 to hack day in 31 days, what a ride it has been;
But that’s not the end of it, plenty of planing to do for Leeds Hack 2011 (including the question do we do it every 6 months or every 12?) , we would love to know what you think so either comment on this post, send us an email or heck – pick up the phone and give us a call (07787446456 – please don’t send me 40 of the same message though.. I’m still receiving them the last time someone did this).
We would love you to blog, tweet and generally tell people about Leeds Hack (get them to come to the next one…)
So that’s all from the Shack until next time… although we will keep this blog updated with updates and announcements for 2011 so keep it on your feed reader, I’ll probably start using the official twitter account at some point as well
Leeds Hack is a combination of effort, money, promises, favours and ‘it can happen as long as I don’t see it happen’ from a lot of people, so lets thank a few people while your here; Continue reading
We had some fantastic entries to our sponsor challenges but some of the hacks really stood out when it came to judging;
The judges were impressed with the real world use of this hack, the uses of sending an automated text message or tweet when you reach a certain point are fantastic and time saving, the design was fluid and we could really see you’d worked hard. A well deserved win.
You will each receive a custom Laptop, Mobile and tablet skin for you devices thanks to our sponsor Gadget Glamour
Although submitted as a comedy hack, the judges really liked the idea of having a holiday with no set destination, the age old question of where can I go for £300 has been answered! We love this hack and think you should get your own domain for it (maybe without the criminal element), join the bmi affiliate program and make some money from this!
You will each receive a weekend in Brussels with flights and hotel included thanks to BMI
If we had a ‘business in a box’ award or a ‘you better launch this as an app’ award, you’d have won that as well, luckily you had a cracking design and the judges were impressed with everything you did, this solves a real world problem and we certainly think there is a startup there for you (go on, go and do it)
You will Each receive $250 of credit from CodeMyConcept
Being the only entry to a category doesn’t mean that you instantly win, you still have to prove your worth – so making 3 API wrappers, 2 chat bots and a GUI interface (sadly not in visual basic) certainly made you worthy of the awesome prize (those hard to get BDPs)
You will receive 150 Brightbox Dollar Pounds from Brightbox
Hack days are all about trying new things that you wouldn’t get to play with at work, we don’t usually suggest you try and learn a whole new language in 24 hours but these guys did and it impressed us so much we created a new category for it, so Best New Skill is PivotPad
You will Each receive $250 of credit from CodeMyConcept
Down to the audience vote was this one (Sorry Caius) but a pen that Quacks is a winner in anyone book, a pen that Quacks, moos and baas is a winner in all of our hearts.. well done Mel!
You will receive $250 of credit from CodeMyConcept.
Emails with prizes will be going out midweek
Okay so lets get on with who won which award (if the hacks are live we will post a link, if we don’t have a link but they are live tweet @thehodge)
