Hackathon Theme: The Arts & Tech

Every summer, CUNY Tech Prep welcomes our incoming cohort of fellows with a hackathon that’s a bit different. 

We’ve done away with the intimidating environment, hyper-competitive challenges and stressful all-nighters found in traditional hackathons to create an event that focuses on learning, collaboration, and fun.  

This year, our hackathon theme is The Arts & Tech, and we're inviting fellows to form three- and four-person teams to take on challenges at the intersection of the arts and technology. Hackers will design and build their data visualizations or Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) from August 21 - August 25, 2023. 

Our hackathon combines professional development,  technical skill programming, and networking alongside the weeklong collaborative team hacking.

Requirements

Main Requirements: 

Build the first iteration of your project that relates to the hackathon's team: The Arts & Tech.

This is an exercise in learning.The pursuit of knowledge, risk-taking, and code integrity are rewarded, as opposed to merely delivering a clean product. 

  • Must be in a team with at least 3 to 4 people.  

  • Use Discord (invite link sent to CTP fellows on Slack) to communicate with your teammates for the duration of the Hackathon.

  • Hackers are not allowed to use projects they have already worked on prior to the event.

Projects:

  • Art and technology are vast fields that define and reshape the world we live in. Here is some project inspiration to help fellows build projects that encompass both: 

    • Machine learning to explore human perceptions and expectations of art and creativity

    • Data science algorithms to generate art and music

    • Simple neural network trained on a certain art or set of images to generate stunning visual imagery

    • E-commerce app to share and sell fine art pieces

  • Hackers can compete for categories listed on our DevPost.

  • Projects can be geared toward web development, mobile development, and data science.

  • Hackers should also be able to answer the question: “How does my project relate to the theme?”

  • Projects do not have to be deployed. If the project is not deployed, please provide instructions on how to run it locally.

 Schedule:

  • Hackers have from August 21, 2023 to August 25th, 20232 at 11:59 pm PM ET to work on and submit their projects.

  • Hackers are free to continue working on their projects after the hackathon ends.

 Submission:

  • Teams must submit their projects on our DevPost by August 25, 2023, 11:59 PM ET for them to be judged.

  • Please submit a link to the project’s GitHub repository and/or deployed website.

  • Please provide a slide deck (PowerPoint/Canva, etc.) or a video that showcases your project

Prize Categories:

  • Overall Hackathon Winner

  • SWE Best Practices Award: Code is clean, good use of frameworks, naming conventions, documentation, etc.

  • Data Science Award: Excellent implementation of a data set or data visualizations as part of their project.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$1,360 in prizes
LinkedIn Premium
1 winner

Our sponsor, LinkedIn, will give 6 months of LinkedIn Premium to each member of the team that wins the Overall Hackathon Winner Award (up to 4 members).

Our sponsor, nuArch, will give $50 to each member of the team that wins the SWE Best Practices Award (up to 4 teammates).

SWE Best Practices Award
1 winner

Our sponsor, nuArch, will give $50 to each member of the team that wins the SWE Best Practices Award (up to 4 teammates).

Data Science Best Practices Award
1 winner

Our sponsor, nuArch, will give $50 to each member of the team that wins the Data Science Best Practices Award (up to 4 teammates).

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Robert Vance

Amit Sonar
Senior Software Engineer / LinkedIn

Vadim Gellerman
Managing Partner / nuArch LLC

Mani Ramezan
Senior Software Engineer / LinkedIn

Spencer Wohlers

Spencer Wohlers
Principal Product Engineer & CEO, Invisible Carrot

Raj Korpan

Raj Korpan
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Hunter College

Leeran Farin

Leeran Farin
Full Stack Software Engineer, Scarce City

Kareem Edmonds
Multidisciplinary Designer | CTP Alum

Alex Mueller
Software Engineer / Salesforce/Tableau

Judging Criteria

  • Relevance to Theme
    Project is relevant to the theme of the intersection of the arts and technology.
  • Innovation of Solution
    Scale and novelty of the technology being used, and/or the architectural approach taken.
  • Quality of Implementation
    Ability for the team to reach a conclusion about the viability of the project.
  • Quality of Presentation
    Ability for the judges to clearly understand (1) what the desired functionality is, and (2) see that the functionality is behaving as expected.
  • Team Collaboration
    Team shows evidence of good collaboration through project presentation, division of labor, etc.
  • Learning-forward Approach
    Team shows evidence that they challenged themselves to make building this project a learning experience.
  • Nomination for SWE Best Practices Award
    Code is clean, good use of frameworks, naming conventions, documentation, etc.
  • Nomination for Data Science Award
    Excellent implementation of a data set or data visualizations as part of their project.

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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Hackathon sponsors

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