Bonnier Hack Day, Part One

Some 15 teams kicked off Bonnier Hacker Day with a sandwich, a cola and a bit of networking before sitting down to a two-hour open-mic session with a range of developers. Each team will be developing a business concept or technical solution over a 24-hour period, starting at 2 p.m. "The goal of Hack Day is not just to inspire those taking part, but to provide a chance for people to network within Bonnier in a unique way and come up with new ideas," says Paulina Modlitba Söderlund of Bonnier R&D, organizer of the event.

Among those developers speaking were Chris Thorpe of the Guardian, who detailed a range of data available via the newspaper's application programming interface and Ulla-Maaria Engeström of ThingLink who talked about her company's work classifying and making web images interactive. Other companies from outside Bonnier offering advice and participating include Saplo, Jayway as well as Ted Valentin, organizer of 24 Hour Business Camp. Bonnier companies with teams include Bink, Bonnier Tidskrifter, TV4, Mobilab, Benjamin Media and Swedish newspapers Expressen and Sydsvenskan. There is also a team of students from KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

Team bink, Louise Fasth and Krysztofer Bergendahl are interface developers at Bink, though for the time being they are still located within Bonnier Tidskrifter Digital Media. They are working on an idea to connect event sites together. "We'll see if we present them tomorrow," says Fasth, laughing.

Anton Lindqvist and Herman Olsson from Mobilab have drawn a diagram on the white board behind them. In the same room Emanuel Karlsten from Expressen sits in a corner. Lindqvist explains that they're looking more at the technical side.

"We look smart at least with the help of our diagram," says Olsson. While he might not stay the night, Olsson says he probably won't leave until 11 p.m.