Take one thing as granted: there won’t be a lot of sleep for those who made their way to Playa del Carmen, Mexico.
While the inaugural ZENCON technology conference and innovation hackathon kicked off with a warm welcome at Grand Hyatt Playa del Carmen Resort on Friday, there was already a sense of friendly competition in the air.
No wonder, as the teams arriving will all be taking part in the first-ever "Innovation Awards Hackathon" across five blockchain-related challenges, starting on Saturday. They will have precisely 68 hours to come up with the best and most creative ideas to win one of five grand prizes, each worth 10,000 USD. At their side will be professional mentors and judges watching their every step.
ZENCON is operated by Dubai-based ZENIQ Technologies Ltd: "Our vision was to bring the brightest minds in blockchain and cryptocurrency technology together and challenge them to unleash the power of our blockchain technology over a weekend. But more importantly we want people to learn from each other and share their discoveries," said ZENIQ Chief Executive Officer Erwin Dokter.
The Grand Hyatt Playa del Carmen had been specifically chosen because of its strong track record of hosting events as well as its technical infrastructure offering a dedicated 2-Gigabit-Connection to participants.
In total 10,512 applications were received for one of the 200 coveted spots. Over the past months a team of ZENIQ developers and members of the management team shortlisted the best 200 entries that would join them in Mexico.
The main goal of the event is to make the power of the ZENIQ smartchain available to a broad mass of developers from a wide range of backgrounds. "We want to see applications we didn’t even think of, clever solutions to problems we might have never heard about and of course to meet new developers and promote exchange between all of them," Dokter added.
ZENCON is presented by ZENIQ’s partners Avinoc (DEF AVINOC) and Tupan (DEF TUPAN). Both companies will be testing beta versions of their Smart Chain for stand-alone solutions in individual joint ventures.
