SAN JOSE, Calif.--PayPal today announced new details of its second annual Innovate conference, taking place Oct. 26-27 at Moscone West in San Francisco. The conference will bring together industry experts and developers to explore three main areas that are changing the way we pay: the phenomenal growth of mobile payments, the rise of social commerce and the move to Internet-enabled local payments. Netscape co-founder and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Web 2.0 inventor Tim O’Reilly, as well as surprise guests, will convene at the event to discuss the future of commerce and payments – and what developers need to know to capitalize on it.
Also at the conference, developers who have built successful innovative businesses using PayPal will discuss lessons learned since the company opened its PayPal X global payments platform last year.
“There’s a developer gold rush going on, and PayPal is providing the picks and shovels,” said O’Reilly, who described the success of PayPal X in the last 12 months.
“Last year we wanted to let developers into the PayPal X sandbox and see how they would be inspired to change the way people pay. The results in only one year have been both inspiring and surprising,” said Naveed Anwar, senior director of PayPal’s Developer Network. “We’ve seen exponential growth in mobile payments in particular, as developers across all major mobile platforms are adopting PayPal for its simplicity.”
Program Highlights
Attendees at Innovate 2010 are invited to more than 50 sessions. Hot topics include sessions that will explore the capabilities of mobile and social activities, such as:
The conference will also feature the following tracks:
- Town Halls – Q&A sessions with experts in a particular area
- Technology Playgrounds – 15-minute presentations with hands-on workshops
- Experiential zones - Attendees will see firsthand some of the boldest attempts to break new ground using the PayPal X platform
More than 300 PayPal team members will be at Innovate 2010 to give attendees one-on-one support and help them monetize their great ideas.
PayPal X Developer Challenge and X Awards
The winners of PayPal’s first developer challenge, Rentalic and appbackr, have gone on to create successful businesses with additional funding from the venture capital community. Winners of the second Developer Challenge will be announced at Innovate 2010. PayPal will award the winners with up to $160,000 in prizes. PayPal and its partners are also introducing X Awards, the People’s Choice Award and the Audience Award, which offer a unique opportunity for developers to be recognized by their peers and win prizes for outstanding applications in various categories. In addition, the fast growing PayPal X community will have the opportunity to select the People’s Choice award winner by voting on x.com.
Sponsors
Dozens of sponsors are supporting Innovate this year, including Oracle, Microsoft, GE Capital and IBM, alongside a number of others including FreshBooks, Green Dot, Joyent, Magento, TopCoder, Zuora and more.
Hackalicious Hackathon
New to Innovate this year is the Hackalicious Hackathon. Developers at Innovate will be the first to see new services, features and product releases, and gain hands-on experience coding and experimenting with the latest changes in the way people pay. The best new or enhanced apps built using the new features, services, and products announced at Innovate 2010 will be featured on the main stage and promoted on the PayPal X Developer Community Portal at x.com.
Diggnation Live
Attendees of Innovate will be able to take part in a live episode of Revision 3’s classic weekly tech and web culture show, Diggnation, broadcast from Moscone West.
Attendee Registration
To register for Innovate 2010, visit the Innovate registration page: https://www.paypal-xinnovate.com/.
Media Registration
Media wishing to attend Innovate 2010 should send an e-mail outlining their publication and credentials to Meagan McCrystle, Access Communications for PayPal at mmcrystle@accesspr.com.
Innovate 2010 Twitter handles include: @PayPal and @PayPalX.
About PayPal
PayPal is the faster, safer way to pay and get paid online. The service allows members to send money without sharing financial information, with the flexibility to pay using their account balances, bank accounts, credit cards or promotional financing. With more than 87 million active accounts in 190 markets and 24 currencies around the world, PayPal enables global ecommerce. PayPal is an eBay company and is made up of three leading online payment services: the PayPal global payment service, the Payflow Gateway and Bill Me Later. The company's open payment platform, PayPal X, allows developers to build innovative payment applications on multiple platforms and devices. More information about the company can be found at PayPal.com.
PayPal is headquartered in San Jose, California and its international headquarters is located in Singapore.