Hackathon

Hackathon contest

The Hackathon is a tradition at iPhoneDevCamp — and now iPadDevCamp. Attendees form teams and work on applications throughout the event. Applications are demo’d Sunday late afternoon and winners are chosen in a variety of categories. Teams tend to be small, but everyone can provide value — even those without significant programming skills — as almost every team needs design and testing help.

Schedule

The hackathon contest runs concurrent with the sessions and tutorials. Additionally, time has been set aside Friday night, Saturday evening, and Sunday afternoon for teams to work on their projects.

Friday night	During the party is a good time to start sharing your ideas, choose your project, and begin to find your team.
Saturday	Before the first session at 10am and after the last session, people have an opportunity to recruit others to help with their projects.
Sunday 1pm	Entry deadline.
Sunday 2pm	Demos.
Sunday 4pm	Awards ceremony.

Awards

The teams that win Best game, Best web app, and Best social app each receive three (3) free ebooks of the recipients’ choosing from our sponsor, the Pragmatic Programmers.

The team that wins Best enterprise app receives one (1) license for DataAbstract for OS X and one (1) license for RemObjects SDK for OS X, courtesy of our sponsor “RemObjects Software”. The team will also receive one free ebook of the recipient’s choosing from the Pragmatic Programmers.

An attendee can win only one (1) award during the event. Teams with more than three people will receive $20 iTunes gift certificates for their fourth and fifth team members. Only five (5) awards will be given to any team. Unclaimed awards will be distributed pseudorandomly to the other attendees.

Eligibility

The iPad app must not currently be available via the iTunes App Store. iPad web apps are always eligible. In addition, please do not submit jailbroken apps for the Hackathon.
Next you must sign up for the Hackathon contest and demos by 1pm on Sunday.
You must demonstrate your iPad App or iPad-optimized web app during the Hackathon demos.
The staff and employees of sponsors for iPadDevCamp Chicago are not eligible for any of the awards. Sorry.

Criteria

In general, Apps will be judged on not only on their function, but also if they are fun or innovative.

We also value Apps with simplicity and elegance.

We will give priority to Apps that were developed entirely during iPadDevCamp.

We also give priority to Apps that offer source code under an open source license, however, this is NOT a requirement to win.

iPad Apps or web apps do not have to be “finished” to win. We would rather you demonstrate what your App can do well, rather then worry about what may be not complete.