BEIJING - Beijing will be overrun with hackers, geeks and computer whizzes this weekend as the capital hosts it's first all-night hack-athon.

The Disrupt Beijing Hackathon, or hacker marathon, will draw representatives from top Silicon Valley companies as well as hundreds of Chinese and Western software engineers to Beijing's China National Convention Center (CNCC) on Saturday and Sunday, as they engage in a deadlock of technological wits.

"To put it straightforward -it's not anything malicious," said Tanya Porquez, director of strategic marketing and events of TechCrunch, the organization behind the contest.

Given 24 hours to develop a useable program and just 60-seconds to pitch it to a group of judges, the event is set to challenge China's most stalwart software developers.

TechCrunch, a San Francisco-based publication devoted to reporting on Silicon Valley startups, is offering more than $500,000 in cash and technology prizes to China's young software engineers.

"It's about being really creative, hacking into something that's a traditional format and creating something totally new," Porquez said.

The weekend hack-athon will be followed by the Disrupt Beijing conference on Monday, which will give 17 out of 500 applicants, most of which are Chinese startups, the chance to pitch their company ideas to some of the industry's greatest minds.

For China, it's a chance for the nation's top technology entrepreneurs and engineers to meet with Silicon Valley leaders and share insights on how to break into the technology sector.

"We've had a lot of discussions with Silicon Valley people and people in the tech community, and what we found is that they are intimidated by China," Porquez said. "There have been many people who enter into the Chinese market with American ways and just fail miserably."

Likewise, there are many Chinese companies looking for insight on how to break into the global technology market, she added.

"It's about creating a beneficial dialogue with each other and demystifying one another," she said.

TechCrunch has organized many conventions, but this is its first event overseas.

"As innovative startups have grown in China, it only makes sense for TechCrunch to bring their conference to Beijing," said Mathew Prince, co-founder and CEO of CloudFlare, a Web performance and security company based in San Francisco.

For Prince, who launched his company at the Disrupt Hackathon in San Francisco last year, it's a chance to showcase his company on the far side of the Pacific while expanding his recruitment efforts to China's vast pool of talented engineers.

"We're looking for Chinese engineers who want to join a fast-growing Silicon Valley-based startup in order to work with other extremely smart engineers and learn how to grow a startup into a global brand," he said.

Among the event's list of high-profile tech speakers are Internet giants Steven Chen, creator of YouTube; Pony Ma, founder of Tencent, one of the nation's largest internet services providers; and Fritz Demopoulos, founder of Qunar.com, China's biggest travel website.

Regular admission tickets to the two-day conference, which cost $1,995, are still available and can be purchased online at http://disrupt.techcrunch.com.

"We're really proud to be doing it in Beijing," Porquez said.

China Daily