PennApps XII is scheduled for September 4th-6th, 2015 at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia. The twelfth iteration of the nation's first college hackathon is upping the hackathon to new extremes, with the world's top and most promising hackers coming together to tackle real world problems using the latest in hardware and software. Teams start working on their hacks (at 8 PM) after the Friday evening kickoff and continue working till Sunday morning (9:00 AM). All submissions MUST be made here on Devpost. Videos are optional.

Eligibility

If you applied to PennApps XII, recieved an offer to attend and went on to confirm that you will do so, you are eligible to attend PennApps. If you attended and hacked at PennApps, then you are eligible to make a submission. 

Requirements

Make your project, submit your hack to Devpost and attend the PennApps expo to show off what you built. You must demo at the expo and submit on Devpost in order to be eligible for prizes.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$63,650 in prizes

PennApps: Grand Prize – First Place

Oculus Rift + Apple Watch Sport + Android Wear + XBOX One/PS4
| Trip to Facebook HQ for the World Hackathon Finals (Sponsored by Facebook)

PennApps: Main Prize – Second Place

Oculus Rift + Apple Watch Sport/Android Wear/XBOX One/PS4 |
Fitbits for each team member (sponsored by Facebook)

PennApps: Main Prize – Third Place

Oculus Rift/Apple Watch Sport/Android Wear/XBOX One/PS4

PennApps: Best Health Hack

Hacks that have applications in wellness, medicine and healthcare.

Prize: Thalmic Myo Gesture Control Arm Band for each team member

PennApps: Best Use of Health Dataset or Health Device

Jawbone Activity Trackers for each team member

PennApps: Best Hardware Hack

Hacks that are primarily based on physical, electronic and other non-software building blocks
Prize: Full Hardware Toolkit, which includes: Light up hoodie, Microcontrollers, cables, and other assorted add ons | Full List, Adafruit Arduino + Bluetooth, Bluefruit LE SPI Friend, FTDI Module, Buspirate | Electric styles giftcard ($60 per member), Soldering Iron, Helping Hands, Wire stripper, solder, Solder sucker, fume extractor, assorted wire, breadboard, protoboard

PennApps Route | Best Education Technology Hack

Hacks that are either educational in nature, or have applications in an educational environment. Prize: iPad Minis for each team member

PennApps Route | Best VR/AR Hack

Hacks where the main focus is on Virtual/Augmented Reality.
Prize: iPad Minis for each team member

PennApps Route | Best Social/Local Impact & Government Hack

Hacks with a primary goal geared towards social impact, or focus on a local community. Prize: 8 tickets up for grabs to the October 1st Phillies Game in the Mayor’s box | courtesy City of Philadelphia; or iPad Mini for each team member.

PennApps Route | Best Sports & Entertainment Technology Hack

Hacks that have applications in sports, entertainment, and other large events.
Prize: iPad Minis for each team member | Philadelphia Flyers tickets for each team member

PennApps Route | Best Humor Hack

Hacks that give us the funnies. Prize: iPad Minis for each team member

PennApps Route | Best Design Hack

Hacks that are either tools for designing, or where the majority of the work is aesthetic or visual in nature.
Prize: iPad Minis for each team member

#BestMicrosoftHack Prize

Microsoft Surface Pro 3's for each team member

Best Use of iOS or OS X

Apple Watch (42mm, regular) with White Sport Band for each team member

Best Use of Linode Services

Samsung Galaxy S Tablet for each team member

Best Public Safety Prize (Sponsored by TASER International | Axon)

Axon branded Bose or Beats headphones for each team member

Best Use Of Plaid API

1 bitcoin for each team member

Best Use of EveryBlock API (Sponsored by Comcast)

Beats headphones for each team member

Best Cloud Based Mobile App (Sponsored by Goldman Sachs) (2)

Bose speakers for each team member

Best Use of Capital One API (Nessie)

$250 Amazon gift cards for each team member

Hottest Health Hack (Sponsored by Epic)

$250 Visa gift card for each team member for best hack using our FHIR API (see open.epic.com)

Best use of Amazon Web Services

1 terabyte hard drives to each team member

Best Stock Price Data Hack (Sponsored by FINRA)

Best hack utilizing end-of-day stock price data (provided) for companies trading on the NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ stock exchanges. A data set will be provided that contains all active securities tickers with daily EOD stock price data for the last 20 years | Prize: $1000 pre-paid AMEX and Mastercards for the winning team

Best Use of an IAPD SEC Dataset (Sponsored by FINRA)

The data set describes investment advisers, the companies they are registered with and a set of public disclosures against them. Prize awarded for intelligent analysis, visualizations, or other cool uses of the data | Prize: $1000 pre-paid AMEX and Mastercards for the winning team

Best Use of GDG (Data Generator REST Services) API (Sponsored by FINRA)

Data Generator is a library for systematically producing large volumes of data. Using GetDataGen REST you can start data generation, check status of generation and get generated data| Prize: $1000 pre-paid AMEX and Mastercards for the winning team

Best Use of MongoDB

$50 Amazon gift cards for each team member, team has a chance to win a trip to NYC to attend MongoDB World

"We Can See Where You Were Going With This One" Prize (Sponsored by Plaid)

100 tacos for the winning team

Best Social Innovation Hack: Building Something that Matters (Sponsored by Venture for America)

The winning team will receive $500, loads of VFA swag, and automatic application advancement for the VFA fellowship!

Best Domain Registered with Domain.com

Dell Bluetooth speakers for each team member

Best AlphaLab Gear Hardware Hack

Automatic entrance into the AlphaLab Hardware Accelerator, much swag, trophies

EA Pathfinders: Best of Show | Best Use of EA API

2 EA Games per team member, EA swag and merchandise (and trophies), opportunity to talk with the Office of the Chief Creative Officer about EA

EA Pathfinders: Players' Choice Award | Best Hack with EA API according to players/hackers

2 EA Games per team member, EA swag and merchandise (and trophies), opportunity to talk with the Office of the Chief Creative Officer about EA

Best Hack for Scaling Human Connection (Sponsored by AirBnB)

AirBnB travel coupon, AirBnB backpack, AirBnB water bottle

Best Use of Twilio API

4G Selkbag

Most Innovative Embedded Application (Sponsored by L3 Communications)

Raspberry Pi starter kit

Best Use of the Uber API

$250 cash prize

Best Internet of Things Hack (Sponsored by Lutron Electronics)

Caseta Smart Bridge Starter Kit

Best Use of IBM Bluemix

Parrot mini-drone for the winning team

Most Innovative Electric Imp Project

Electric Imp dev kit and a SparkFun multimeter for each team member

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

How to enter

If you applied to PennApps XII, recieved an offer to attend and went on to confirm that you will do so, you are eligible to attend PennApps. If you attended and hacked at PennApps, then you are eligible to make a submission. 

Judges

A Killer Judging Panel

A Killer Judging Panel

Judging Criteria

  • Technical Difficulty
    Is the hack technically interesting or difficult? Is it just some lipstick on an API, or were there real technical challenges to surmount? This is the most important criterion that your hack will be judged upon for the general prizes.
  • Originality
    Is the hack more than just another generic social/mobile/local app? Does it do something entirely novel, or at least take a fresh approach to an old problem?
  • Polish
    Is the hack usable in its current state? Is the user experience smooth? Does everything appear to work? Is it well designed?
  • Usefulness
    Is the hack practical? Is it something people would actually use? Does it fulfill a real need people have?

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