A new hackathon says its focus on ‘solving real business challenges’ makes it different from most other hackathons.

It’s being run by London-based DevLab and will take place at Canary Wharf next month.

The three-day ‘big brand hack’ event starts on Friday 9th May 2014 with a conference that explores how brands and startups can work together effectively.

This will be followed by a weekend hackathon on Saturday 10th and Sunday 11th, with developers given 27 hours to build and present a prototype. As well as receiving cash prizes, winners will also have the opportunity of further development work with the supporting brands.

Specific challenges will be announced towards the end of April, with these challenges expected to involve gamification, big data, wearables, UX and the Internet of Things.

Industry supporters include Nokia, which will be showing developers how they can easily port Android apps to the open-source Android-based Nokia X platform. Other confirmed brands include 3scale, Cisco, Kwamecorp, Geometry, Sapient Nitro, Bloom.fm, Last.fm, Mixlr, Urban Airship, Distimo, VisionMobile, Judo Payments, Apptivation and Beamly (formerly Zeebox).

Calypso Harland, CEO of DevLab, said “I’ve seen so many great ideas generated at hackathons – yet so few are developed any further, let alone go to market. DevLab LIVE will be different. The UK is home to world-leading creative services and digital entrepreneurs. So let’s get them together and make some magic happen.”

Pricing is £60 for either the conference or the hackathon and £100 for both, although the discount code ‘DEVEASY’ currently offers a 25% discount.

A pre-hack meetup will take place on Thursday 24th April.

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