New Friends, New Hacks is all about welcoming beginners to the community. If you've got a friend or two who want a safe, welcoming environment for their first hackathon, bring them here! We'll have easy workshops, fun mini-events, and prizes geared specifically at beginners. For our experienced hackers, we'll ask you to work with our new community members.

Eligibility

This event open to hackers, all over the world, who are students at the time of the hackathon or who have graduated within the last 12 months. Students can include high school students, university undergraduate or postgraduate students, and people who are in vocational training such as apprenticeships.

As per our Code of Conduct, there is no discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, social class, economic status, veteran status, disability, or age.

Requirements

You must submit a 2 minute (max) video demo!

Work must be entirely completed during the hackathon hours.

You must link to a public code repository for your project. 

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

First Overall

Echo Show 5s and MLH Swag

Second Overall

Anker Soundcore Wireless Earbuds and MLH Swag

Third Overall

Casio Calculator Watches and MLH Swag

New Friends, New Voters

Where ever you are in the world, it's important for your local community to be active in politics and voting. This weekend we want you to tackle voter registration and local activism. Our winning team will be able to select a charity that MLH will make a donation to in their name!

Best New Friends, Best New Hack

This weekend is all about our most experienced hackers mentoring and helping our newest, so we're looking for teams made up of beginners and experienced hackers working together for this prize category. The team made up of at least 50% first time hackers with our favorite project will take home Arduino Starter Kits.

Best Use of DataStax Astra

Leverage DataStax Asta's powerful cloud database service in your project this weekend for a chance to win YubiKey Security Keys. Getting started in minutes with 10 GB free, no credit card needed.

Most Creative Radar.io Hack

Build the most creative hack using Radar's SDKs and APIs for geofencing, location search, and geocoding. Some ideas for location-aware projects include a delivery tracker, campus building locator, and a Find my Friends clone. Winning team members will be eligible to win a Tile Sticker Smart Tracker and a chance to be featured by Radar.

Best Hardware Hack presented by Digi-Key

Build a hardware hack with what you have at home or use emulators to simulate hardware for your hack. The best project will receive Arduino Starter Kits for each team member.

Best Domain Name from Domain.com

Register a domain using Domain.com during the weekend. Each team may submit one entry per person on the team. Each winning team member will receive a Domain.com branded backpack.

Best use of Google Cloud

Build your hackathon project with a suite of secure storage, powerful compute, and integrated data analytics products provided by Google Cloud. See full list of products here: g.co/cloud. Each winning team member will receive a Google Nest Mini.

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Major League Hacking

Major League Hacking

Judging Criteria

  • Originality
    Has this project been done before at hackathons in the past? How creative is their project in solving the problem at hand?
  • Adherence to Theme
    Does the hack adhere to the event's theme? Does it implement that theme fully or just partially?
  • Learning
    Did the team stretch themselves? Did they try to learn something new? What kind of projects have they worked on before?
  • Completion
    Does the hack work? Did the team achieve everything they wanted?
  • Design
    Did the team put thought into the user experience? How well designed is the interface?
  • Technology
    How technically impressive was the hack? Was the technical problem the team tackled difficult? Did it use a particularly clever technique or did it use many different components? Did the technology involved make you go "Wow"?

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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