A HackingContest is a way to get geeks to be daring and creative. The goal is to design a cool new app in a short amount of time. The entries must usually be judged by a panel of respected judges. Prizes are a good incentive for participation.
CANCELLED
Unfortunately, the contest has been cancelled due to lack of interest. I think the contest might have been fun, but I didn't have time to rally hackers to the cause, and if I let it go I'm afraid it will be a dud.
Thank you to all the hackers, judges, and sponsors who expressed interest. Maybe next year!
-- ShimonRura
Judges
Organizer
ShimonRura, Voo2do and Renesys
Rules
These are proposed rules and will be subject to change.
- You build a software application. It can be a web app, game, a plugin for an existing system, a clone of something else, something totally different, whatever. It just has to be cool.
- Contest runs at BarCamp between 5pm on Saturday and 12:30 in the afternoon on Sunday.
- All software must be written at BarCamp. You can use open-source code, but you can't just show up and put finishing touches on a half-complete app; that's cheating.
- Teams must be between 1 and 5 people.
- Each team must register at the beginning of the contest and submit milestones according to the contest schedule, TBD.
- All entries remain the property of their respective teams.
- Points will be awarded by judges at the conclusion of the contest, and leading teams will win prizes.
Prizes
Thank you to MikeWalsh for generously offering a prize pot of $500, which he later allowed to be converted to a $200 flexible sponsorship.
Schedule
This schedule is tentative.
Sat 5pm - team registration; contest begins
Sat 8pm - first mockups/prototype due
Sun 10am - mostly-complete demo due
Sun 12:30pm - final submissions and scoring
Sun 2:00pm - awards ceremony
Entry Ideas
- Can we ask for projects and offer bounties? For example, my company would love to have something like a really interactive Flash program that could do some complex computations based on a spec, look nice, and be really fast to load - and we'd be more than willing to offer a "bounty" - we have a few promotional items like an Averatec 6100 laptop (MSRP $1100) that we'd be happy to give away...
- ShimonRura: I think that would be cool. I'm not sure if it would fit with the contest, but you could certainly run your own mini-contest. You just have to round up the people to compete for it...
- ChrisBall: It's a pity to not have a group coding event -- maybe we could have a breakout meeting early on Saturday to talk about what we could do instead? I'd be happy enough with picking a wanted feature in some open-source app and working on it together, it wouldn't have to be competitive.