Participant Guidelines & Code of Conduct

• Participants must be 18 years of age or older as of February 25th, 2023.

• All participants taking part in BeachHacks 7.0 must have received an acceptance email and checked in with the BeachHacks team at the beginning of the event.

• All participants must be respectful and professional towards other participants, organizers, and sponsors. Any form of discrimination or harassment will not be tolerated and will result in disqualification.

• Participants must not share confidential information about their company, school, or any other organization during the event.

• Participants are responsible for their own equipment, devices, and any other materials used during the event.

• Participants must not engage in any illegal activities or conduct that would violate any laws or regulations, including CSULB Campus Rules and Regulations found here: https://www.csulb.edu/student-affairs/campus-rules-and-regulations.

• Any breach of the rules can result in disqualification from the event.

• The event organizers reserve the right to make any final decisions in case of any disputes or violations of the rules.

Project Guidelines

• Projects will be made by teams of 1-4 members, all of whom must adhere to the Participant Guidelines. All team members must be present and actively participating during the hackathon event.

• All projects must be started during the hackathon event and should not be pre-existing projects.

• All projects must be original work and should not include any plagiarized content. Any use of pre-existing libraries or frameworks must be acknowledged and properly cited.

• Projects should not include graphic content including sexualization, violence, or any other content that is not appropriate for a public audience.

• Any violation of these guidelines may result in disqualification from the event.

• The event organizers reserve the right to make any final decisions in case of any disputes or violations of the rules.

Judging Process

• All projects will be submitted to Devpost for the initial collection of project information.

• Projects will be presented in a science fair format for judging.

• A panel of judges, consisting of industry professionals and experts, will evaluate each project based on the following criteria, derived from Major League Hacking’s ruleset:
  

  • 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"?

  • Design: Did the team put thought into the user experience? How well-designed is the interface? For a website, this might be about how beautiful the CSS or graphics are. For a hardware project, it might be more about how good the human-computer interaction is (e.g. is it easy to use or does it use a cool interface?).

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

  • Learning: Did the team stretch themselves? Did they try to learn something new? What kind of projects have they worked on before? If a team which always does virtual reality projects decides to switch up and try doing a mobile app instead, that exploration should be rewarded.

• The judging criteria will not include:
  • How good your code is. It doesn't matter if your code is messy, or not well commented, or uses inefficient algorithms. Hacking is about playing around, making mistakes, and learning new things. If your code isn't production ready, we're not going to mark you down.
  • How well you pitch. Hacking is about building and learning, not about selling.
  • How good the idea is. Hackathons aren't about coming up with innovative ideas. It's about building and learning.
  • How well the project solves a problem. You can build something totally useless and as long as you're learning and having fun, that's a good hack! Sometimes a pointless project is one of the best hacks!

• Participants will have the opportunity to present and demonstrate their projects to the judges in person.

• Judges will have the chance to ask questions and provide feedback to the participants.

• Winners will be announced at the end of the event and prizes will be awarded based on the judges' decision.

• The event organizers reserve the right to make any final decisions in case of any disputes or violations of the rules.