Hack Nights are Big Nerd Ranch’s way of getting to know our community and sharpen our own skills. On Monday, we collaborated with MailChimp and challenged developers to hack on MailChimp’s revamped API.

We were joined by Eric Muntz, MailChimp’s lead engineer, and Nathan Ranson, API liaison, who were on hand to answer any questions.

We saw two fantastic presentations at the end of the evening:

• Mikhail Burshteyn created Flock, which uses the MailChimp API for informal event planning. You can see what your friends have planned when you join their “flock,” then hash out the details with a group chat. 

Patrick Van Stee, Jithu Maliakal and Taggart Bowen-Gaddy presented MailDown, which allows the user to send an email in markdown and then see it live online. The code for MailDown is available on GitHub.

If you’re in the Atlanta area, join us for our next Hack Night on August 12. Hope to see you there!