Cars, Hacks, and Prizes

We've had a bunch of big things start happening around Gluecon. First off, we've seen a marked increase in enterprise developers registering to attend this year's show. Second, all of the big boys (Google, IBM, HP, SAP, Intel, Alcatel-Lucent, etc) have decided they need to have a presence at this year's show. Lastly, we've got non-traditional sponsors (General Motors) starting to come on board.All of this points to the larger trend that is occurring with the Cloud, Big Data, Mobile -- and most, importantly, APIs - namely, that these topics have squarely moved out of the "early adopter" phase and are entering the mainstream (though, of course, different areas are at different points in that movement). It all leads to a bigger "push" around the topics Gluecon covers, though, luckily, we'll still have that down to earth, intimate feel.To that end, three quick announcements for Gluecon:1) Yes, General Motors is coming as a sponsor. I won't spoil everything that they're planning to announce via the show, but I can tell you this: they're bringing a car.2) Yes, we'll be having a hackathon once again this year. It will be the evening of May 21st (5-9pm) and the evening of May 22nd (8-Midnight-ish), with prizes to be awarded on the 23rd. If you've already registered for Gluecon, you've received an email regarding this. If you haven't registered yet, you'll be asked if you plan to participate upon registration. Hackathon participants will receive an email with documentation, API keys, ideas, etc roughly one week prior to the hackathon.3) Yes, there will be prizes at Gluecon. And not just for the hackathon participants. Even if you just plan to attend, you can make yourself eligible to win some damn cool stuff. Like what? Like a Nexus 7 or a Arduino plus Raspberry Pi mega-pack.Finally, let me end by saying this: We started Gluecon back in 2009 with the simple premise that there would be technologies that would "glue" together the web application layer. This idea led us quickly to cloud computing -- which, in turn, led us very quickly to APIs. From there, we followed what our community told us and then found ourselves in mobile, big data, NoSQL, and bleeding-edge protocols. My point is that, by following our community, we were already talking about APIs back in 2009 -- roughly 4 years before the mainstream tech press has decided to deem APIs a "big deal."Bottom-line: If you're a developer looking for a deeply technical conference that will get you out in front of what everyone else will be talking about in a couple years -- and you want it all with a welcoming and intimacy you don't get elsewhere -- then, Glue is for you. Join us.