The RMS Exceedance event was a particularly exciting time for our team this year because for the first time ever, we held sessions and events specifically for developers.
I got to know many of the developers who are now using the RMS(one) API to build apps for the RMS(one) platform over the course of the week—during hands-on sessions with the RMS(one) API, through the Hackathon, which challenged participants to create apps in less than 24 hours, and at the Exceedance Party last night, where we celebrated a great week.
Also, 60 of RMS’ client developers, who build proprietary models, got hands-on with the RMS(one) Model Development Kit (MDK), which enables the creation of peril models that are designed to be deployed and run on the RMS(one) platform. And over 70 client developers got hands-on with the RMS(one) API, showing the strong appetite for this API.

RMS’ client developers attending the hands-on sessions with the RMS(one) API at Exceedance 2014
One of the highlights of my week was the Hackathon, because it showed how many great developers are part of our growing community. I was blown away by what our Hackathon participants were able to do in such a short period of time with the API.

The RMS(one) Hackathon participants in Washington D.C.
I had the pleasure of announcing the finalists in The Lab yesterday afternoon and would like to share them with you.

RMS(one) hackathon judges at Exceedance 2014
TickerJoy created by Scott Christian of AXIS, provides high-level summaries of exposure, losses, and other pertinent data in an ESPN-style ticker that can be customized to each user’s preference. TickerJoy is aimed at executives in particular, to provide context behind the data in an easily-digestible way. The app was built in VB and used Excel as the user interface.
CatBurglar created by Alain Bryden and Oliver Baltzer of Analyze Re, is a tongue-in-cheek app allowing hypothetical burglars to identify prime targets near them by arranging properties with high insured values on Google Maps. It even pulls data such as whether or not a house has a security system. Once a target is identified, the burglar can get directions to the property directly in Google Maps. Not only was this a fun, creative app; it also showed an interesting use of the API. (Don’t worry, real data wasn’t used, nor would real data be accessible to anyone outside of the organization that owns the data!)
And finally, our winner:
ClusterGuy created by Felipe Dimer De Oliveira of Risk Frontiers, built an app that compares two portfolios, merges risk exposures, and finds clusters using Mathematica. The results are exported to Google Earth, where clusters are indicated by colors, and portfolios are indicated by symbols. This highly visual way to compare portfolios earned the top prize from our Hackathon judges.
Thank you to everyone who joined us this week at Exceedance. I am looking forward to continuing to work with our developers in the coming months to see more great ideas like these come to life.