🎉 Theme
There is no one theme hackers must follow. You are open to build anything you’d like to make a reality! For project ideas and tips on starting, check out our hacker starter pack.
📃 General Rules
- There is a maximum team size of 4. No minimum, but we do suggest you find a team as it makes hacking easier!
- Teams should be made up exclusively of students (or recent graduates within one year of having graduated) who are not organizers, volunteers, judges, sponsors, or in any other privileged position at the event.
- All team members should be present at the event. Leaving the venue for some time to hack elsewhere is fine.
- Teams can of course gain advice and support from organizers, volunteers, sponsors, and mentors.
- All work on a project should be done at the hackathon.
- Teams can use an idea they had before the event.
- 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.
- Teams can use libraries, frameworks, or open-source code in their projects. Working on a project before the event and open-sourcing it for the sole purpose of using the code during the event is against the spirit of the rules and is not allowed.
- 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.
- Projects that violate the Code of Conduct are not allowed.
- 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.
🎖️ Qualifications
At Hack Western 11, your final project should be new and only built during the weekend of Hack Western. Hacking begins at 9pm on Friday, November 29th, 2024 and ends at 9am on Sunday, December 1st, 2024. All code written for Hack Western must be written within this time frame, with the exception of code taken from public and open source libraries, APIs, or tutorials. Any projects found to have been worked on outside of this time frame will be disqualified from judging.
📥 DoraHacks
DoraHacks is an online platform for managing hackathons, and all hackers of Hack Western 11 must register and submit their project to qualify for prizes. Projects must be submitted to DoraHacks by Sunday, December 1st @9AM to qualify for judging. Note that you will NOT be able to edit your submission afterwards. We recommend finalizing all project details before submitting. **Password to submit: HackWestern11
🧑⚖️ Demos
After hacking, teams will demo their projects to each other and the judges. Focus on showing what you built, as pitches or presentations are discouraged. Judges evaluate the hack itself, not the quality of your pitch, so skipping a demo can hurt your chances.