Name: Hack Nights
Start: 2024-06-24T17:30:00.000-04:00
End: 2024-06-27T17:00:00.000-04:00
Location: Hack Nights

Introducing CharlestonHacks Hack Nights (In-Person Hackathon)

Have you been looking for a simple way to get connected to the Charleston Tech Community? Tired of going back and forth between your home office and the beach all summer? Or have you been looking for a good excuse to learn and play with the latest technologies?

CharlestonHacks Hack Nights is a community-run hackathon in Charleston, South Carolina, and co-hosted by The Ripple Fund. Hack Nights is an in-person hackathon focused on innovation and collaboration with the mission of contributing to the growth of Charleston, South Carolina as a thriving technology, entrepreneurship and creative hub.

The event brings together individuals from diverse backgrounds and skill sets, creating an inspiring environment to collaborate and develop innovative solutions to a specific problem. Our mission is to educate, empower, and enable individuals to join or grow their careers in the local tech industry and connect with likeminded builders.

Charleston Summer Hacks will be held on 3 separate nights in the summer of 2024:

Monday, June 24th, from 5:30pm-10pm - Hack Night 1
Wednesday June 26th from 5:30pm-10pm - Hack Night 2
Thursday, June 27th from 5:30pm-8pm - Awards and happy hour event

What can you expect from CharlestonHacks Hack Nights?

CharlestonHacks Hack Nights offers a unique perspective on the positive potential of Technology. Join us for two unforgettable hacking sessions seperated by a day to continue collaborating and hacking with your team (as much or as little as your team would like) before submitting your project.

Turn your aspirations into tangible achievements! Unlock the potential of tech at the hackathon across diverse domains. Embrace the capabilities of AI to address complex challenges, be it in healthcare, education, environmental conservation, and beyond. CharlestonHacks Hack Nights - Engage_Experiment_Evolve hack - is your opportunity to unleash your creativity, sharpen critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and explore new ideas with the latest technology.

ENGAGE: Collaborate on a project with our community of technologists, creatives, professionals, and students from diverse backgrounds and skill levels and create meaningful connections and expand your professional network.

EXPERIMENT: Come together with teams that possess the foundational knowledge to generate extraordinary ideas, develop remarkable applications, and explore the realm of cutting-edge technologies.

EVOLVE: Expand your understanding of diverse echnologies and acquire invaluable experience in harnessing its potential.

At our event, inclusivity and diversity are of utmost importance. We place a strong emphasis on fostering a positive, friendly, safe, and welcoming environment for all participants. Our community and Code of Conduct are designed to cultivate a supportive atmosphere where everyone feels respected and valued.

We deeply value imagination, ingenuity, kindness, and the shared vision of our participants. Together, we strive to create an environment that encourages collaboration, innovation, and meaningful connections. Furthermore, we actively promote the creation of open-source assets and tools, empowering creators beyond the boundaries of our immediate community.

Join us in this inclusive and diverse space, where we celebrate uniqueness and nurture a culture of mutual support and inspiration. Together, let's embark on a journey of creativity and cooperation that extends far beyond the confines of our event.

We can't wait to meet you and witness your incredible journey as you Engage_Experiment and Evolve!

Requirements

What to Build

For this In-Person only hackathon, our theme is "AI for Humanity". We are encouraging broad learning and experimentation with generative AI tools like Large Language Models (ChatGPT) as well as image and video creation tools like Dall-E, Midjourney and others, but the toolset is really up to you. Whether you want to work with raw data and build unique AI models, or whether you're using Chat GPT to help you code faster or learn a new toolset, any use of AI from beginner to advanced is encouraged. The main point is to explore the use of AI to address topics that are important for humanity. Ideas can include but are not limited to the following:

Healthcare: AI can be used for disease diagnosis, medical image analysis, drug discovery, personalized medicine, patient monitoring, and improving healthcare delivery systems.

Education: AI can assist in personalized learning, intelligent tutoring systems, automated grading, educational content generation, and adaptive learning platforms.

Environmental Conservation: AI can contribute to climate modeling, natural disaster prediction and response, environmental monitoring, wildlife conservation, and sustainable resource management.

Financial Services: AI can aid in fraud detection, risk assessment, algorithmic trading, personalized financial advice, credit scoring, and customer service automation.

Smart Cities: AI can play a role in optimizing energy consumption, traffic management, flood modelling and simulation, urban planning, public safety, and infrastructure maintenance.

Social Impact: AI can be utilized for addressing societal challenges such as poverty alleviation, access to healthcare and education, disaster response, human rights, and social equality.

Data Analysis and Insights: AI techniques like machine learning and data mining can be leveraged for predictive analytics, anomaly detection, pattern recognition, and data-driven decision-making.

Whatever you feel passionate about: AI for humanity can mean different things to different people. We encorage you to work on something that inspires you.

Team Formation

Participant Proposal: At the beginning of the in-person event, interested participants will form groups of 2-5 people who want to work together on a project that is suggested by a team member. Participants are encouraged to form teams quickly as the they will begin hacking immediately following the team formation.

What to Submit

Team projects can use any format necessary to communicate the idea. Projects will be judged on multiple criteria so all submissions will be considered. The submission will include a written description of the project, a video (under 3 minutes) or "deck" presenting the project, and a link to a Github repository where possible.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$1,500 in prizes

FIRST PLACE

1 winner

First place team will be awarded $1000, divided among team members.

SECOND PLACE

1 winner

Second place team will be awarded $500, divided among team members.

HONORABLE MENTION

1 winner

Honorable team will receive the priceless respect of the CharlestonHacks community.

Judges

Lancie Affonso

Will Horn
Founder, g/d/n/a

Bradley Dalton-Oats
Product Consultant, CharlestonHacks

Venkat Ramshesh
Community Lead at g/d/n/a

Judging Criteria

Opportunity Analysis: Problem Statement
Effective communication of the problem the app aims to solve, including its significance and potential impact. Various opportunities for creating a solution.
Technical Implementation: Usability and Design
Technical demonstration showcasing how the application addresses the identified problem and its unique feature/s or solution/s.
Competitive Advantage: Market Understanding
Identification of a specific target market, end users, and competitors. Assessment of the market size and potential customer base. Differentiation from existing solutions.
Hackathon Theme, Social Responsibility
Does the product dovetail with the theme of this Hackathon? What are the humanitarian aspects of the solution?
Defined/Specific User:
This product has a specific user in mind. (E.g. NOT "nurses", NOT "the nursing scrubs market represents $99 billion yearly", but more like "male nurses who work the night shift who have XYZ pain points currently.")
Usability, UI/UX:
Assessment of user experience, design, usability of application.