Blackathon Rules

The spirit of the competition

Remember that hackathons are like marathons. Some people go to compete but most people take part to better themselves and have fun. Whatever the reason is you're at a hackathon, make sure you're upholding the hacker spirit by collaborating with other teams, helping beginners, and having fun.

The rules of the competition

1. As a participant, you should make sure to check how many prizes are available per team. There is usually a limited number of prizes for each challenge. So if you form a large team and win a challenge, keep in mind that the prize will be split evenly among the team members.
2. Teams should be made up exclusively of students (or recent graduates within a few years of having graduated) who are not organizers, volunteers, judges, sponsors, or in any other privileged position at the event.
3. All team members should participate with their team at the event.
4. Teams can of course gain advice and support from organizers, volunteers, sponsors, and others.
5. Teams can use an idea they had before the event.
6. Teams can work on ideas that have already been done. Hacks do not have to be “innovative”. If somebody wants to work on a common idea they should be allowed to do so and should be judged on the quality of their hack. These days it’s hard to find something that’s fully original and teams might not know an idea has been done before anyway.
7. Teams can work on an idea that they have worked on before (as long as they do not re-use code from a previous Blackathon).
8. Teams can use libraries, frameworks, or open-source code in their projects.
9. Adding new features to existing projects is allowed. Judges will only consider new functionality introduced or new features added during the hackathon in determining the winners.
10. Teams must stop hacking once the time is up. However, teams are allowed to debug and make small fixes to their programs after time is up. e.g. If during demoing your hack you find a bug that breaks your application and the fix is only a few lines of code, it's okay to fix that. Making large changes or adding new features is not allowed.
11. Projects that violate the Code of Conduct are not allowed.
12. Teams can be disqualified from the competition at the organizers' discretion. Reasons might include but are not limited to breaking the Competition Rules, breaking the Code of Conduct, or other unsporting behaviour.

Demos

You are strongly encouraged to present a demo of what you have built. In your presentation video it is a good idea to showcase a demo of your solution.

You are encouraged to present what you have done even if your hack is broken or you weren’t able to finish. It's okay if you didn't finish your hack—that happens all the time! Also, demoing is not just about the competition. It's a chance to share with others what you learned and what you tried to build—that's what hacking's all about!

Judging Criteria

Teams will be judged on these four criteria. Judges will weigh the criteria equally. During judging, participants should try to describe what they did for each criterion in their project.

• Originality - Does it do something entirely novel, or at least take a fresh approach to an old problem? (Rate 1-10)
• Impact - Is the hack practical? Is it something people would actually use? Does it fulfill a real need people have? (Rate 1-10)
• Presentation - How well was the project presented? Did it make the hack more compelling? Did it clearly articulate its purpose and impact? (Rate 1-10)
• Learning - Did the team stretch themselves? Did they try to learn something new? (Rate 1-10)
• Adherence to Theme - Does the hack adhere to the event's theme? Does it adhere to the chosen problem area they chose? Does it implement that theme fully or just partially? (Rate 1-10)

These criteria will guide judges but ultimately judges are free to make decisions based on their gut feeling of which projects are the most impressive and most deserving.

It's important to note that these judging criteria do not include:

• How good your code is. It doesn't matter if your code is messy, or not well commented, or uses inefficient algorithms. Hacking is about playing around, making mistakes, and learning new things. If your code isn't production ready, we're not going to mark you down.
• How well you pitch. Hacking is about building and learning, not about selling.
• How good the idea is. Again, hackathons aren't about coming up with innovative ideas. It's about building and learning.
• How well the project solves a problem. You can build something totally useless and as long as you're learning and having fun, that's a good hack! Sometimes a pointless project is one of the best hacks!

So don't worry about coming up with the next big idea or building the next Facebook. You'll have plenty of time for that outside the hackathon. just focus on learning, having fun, and making new friends. At the end of the day the skills you learn and the friends you make might lead to the next big thing—but you don't have to do that to win a hackathon.

Remember!

The competition is just a part of the hackathon. To make the most out of the event, try something new, teach other people, and make new friends!

Happy Hacking from the Blackathon team!

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• hacks
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