Rules of the Competition

BEFORE THE HACKATHON:

1. Each team or even an individual may register to the event via online or to be submitted to Batangas Eastern Colleges Office of the Dean of College. Hackathon teams will be a maximum of 3 people. Teams with 2 people only or an individual will be grouped randomly together by the organizing committee to build teams of 3 people.

2. All individuals are REQUIRED to attend the 1 reading session during the Halina Magbasa Program of Batangas Eastern Colleges (BEC) either in March, April or May.

3. All individuals are ENCOURAGED to attend the 2 Design Thinking sessions in April.

4. All registered participants are REQUIRED to attend the opening ceremony. Failure to attend will forfeit their participation.
   
   

DURING THE HACKATHON:

1. Register your teams or yourself at the registration booth at BEC Main Campus Gym. All BEC Students and San Juaneños aged under 18 should have a waiver signed before 4pm. No WAIVER, NO REGISTRATION.

2. Teams should be made up of at least 1 BEC BSIS student and 2 San Juan, Batangas residents who are not organizers, volunteers, judges, sponsors, or in any other privileged position at the event.

Team Formation Rules

• Each team would comprise 3 members (including a team leader) with 1 team mentor (optional but recommended).

• Team members could be from different institutions as well. Make sure you have the proper Id-card for reference.

• Teams should be made up exclusively of students who are not organizers, Hackathon team. Teams must submit their project work on the theme as mentioned above only.

• No plagiarism/copy-paste will be entertained; if found, the teams will directly be disqualified from the hackathon.

• The hackathon begins (will be posted after finalization of of schedule)

• The team must be registered for Hack-San-Juan: A Beacon Civic Hackathon via google forms provided to submit the hackathon;

•  Unregistered teams will not be entertained in any case.

• The submission form email will be shared with the registered teams and the submission of PPT and other required files must be uploaded in the submission form

• Only one person in the team would be the team leader, who must register on behalf of all the members.

• The PPT (10-12 Slides) of the idea and project link/application/software link for the hackathon should be submitted on the form provided along with all the mandatory details.

• A working demo video of your project must be uploaded along with the project submission

• All the details should be provided in the prescribed format; otherwise, they are bound to get rejected.

•  Teams that have not submitted the hackathon will be automatically disqualified.

• Already implemented hackathons can be used, but extra points will be given to original and innovative hackathons.
  
  

3. Teams will have an assigned mentor and facilitator as their guide in this hackathon. Each team will not be limited to their mentors for information and knowledge but they can still gain advice and support from organizers, volunteers, sponsors, and others like family, friends and classmates.

4. All work on a project should be done during the hackathon time only.

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 an invention. Innovation can be as simple as old or existing technology used in a new situation or new market audience.  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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. Presentations should be submitted with the tech team at 1pm sharp.

10. There will be a pre-judging on May 6, 2023 at 2pm. The top 5 finalists will be announced at 4pm and will advance to the Project Pitching event for Final Round!
    
    

Hack-San-Juan is a 24-hour event that starts at 1pm on May 5, Friday and ends at 1pm on May 6, Saturday.

Project Pitching and Awards Night will start at 5:30pm on May 6, 2023.

Hackathon Project Pitching Event

Project Pitching

After hacking finishes, the panel of judges will screen the solutions through initial demos and Q&A. The Top 5 teams will pitch their project solution to a panel of judges and to the audience for 5 mins with 5 mins Q&A session on the night of Hack-San-Juan: Beacon Civic Hackathon. The project pitching event program starts at 7pm. The winner will be awarded at the end of the program.

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!

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.

• 20% 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?

• 25% Design: Did the team put thought into the user experience? How well designed is the interface?

• 30% Completion: Does the hack work? Did the team achieve everything they wanted?

• 25% Learning: Did the team stretch themselves? Did they try to learn something new? What kind of projects have they worked on before?

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.

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.